Resumen de Oral Chemotherapy: potential benefits and limitations
Enrique Casado Sáenz, Manuel Gonzalez Barón, Jaime Feliu Batlle, A. Redondo Sánchez, E. Espinosa Arranz, Javier de Castro Carpeño, P. Zamora Auñon
Although oral chemotherapeutic agents have been available for the last 50 years, some reservations about their efficacy and the limited interest of pharmaceutical companies have hampered their widespread use. This situation will probably change in the near future as several new oral anticancer agents have been approved and there are more in development.
Convenience and easiness of administration make of oral chemotherapy an attractive option. It avoids the complications and costs derived from intravenous chemotherapy, while maintaining the patients' quality of life. It also allows the replacement of drugs that require protracted administration periods. On the other hand, variable bioavailability and non-compliance appear as the main problems: the former depends on the pharmacological characteristics of the compound, whereas the latter involves time to train the patients and their families and to perform a close follow-up.
With an increasing number of oral agents emerging (both traditional cytotoxic and novel, targeted agents), we can expect that oral chemotherapy will become part of daily practice rather than the exception.
