Background: Present treatment for Wilms' tumour is very successful. Now, efforts are aimed at reducing toxicity and burden of treatment by shortening schedules without loss of effectiveness. The objective of this randomised trial was to assess whether postoperative chemotherapy for patients with stage I intermediate-risk and anaplastic Wilms' tumour could be shortened to only 4 weeks from the standard 18 weeks, while maintaining equivalent event-free survival.
Methods: Between June, 1993, and June, 2000, 410 patients were randomly assigned after four doses of vincristine plus one course of dactinomycin postoperatively either to stop further adjuvant chemotherapy (no further chemotherapy group, n=200), or to receive a further two courses of the same chemotherapy (standard group, n=210). Previous treatment consisted of chemotherapy before nephrectomy of four doses of vincristine and two courses of dactinomycin followed by surgical resection of the tumour. Eligible patients were at least 6 months old and had stage I tumours with either intermediate-risk histology or anaplasia. The primary endpoint of this equivalence trial was 2-year event-free survival. Both per-protocol and intention-to-treat analyses were done.
Findings: By 2 years, 18 recurrences were reported in the standard group, and 22 in the no further chemotherapy group. Event-free survival was 91.4% (95% CI 87.5-95.2) for the no further chemotherapy group and 88.8% (84.3-93.2) for the standard group (difference=2.6%, upper 97.5% confidence limit 8.4%). The null hypothesis, that experimental treatment is less effective than standard treatment, could be rejected (p=0.008).
Conclusions: Shortening duration of chemotherapy could reduce acute and late side-effects and inconvenience for patient and parents while maintaining effectiveness, and could be beneficial in terms of health costs.