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Anal cancer is a rare disease that is usually treated with definitive chemoradiotherapy without surgery. However, 10% of patients develop distant metastatic disease.
To help identify the optimal chemotherapy to treat locally recurrent or metastatic disease, investigators conducted an international, open-label, randomized, phase II trial, in which 91 chemotherapy-naive patients with locally advanced or metastatic anal cancer were assigned to conventional chemotherapy with a 4-day continuous infusion of 5-FU combined with cisplatin every 21 days or to carboplatin combined with paclitaxel every 28 days. Of these patients, most were female (63%–71%), most had metastatic disease (87%–89%), and a minority were HIV-positive (4%–7%).
At a median foll…