Prostate cancer chemotherapy

Abstract

Median survival of hormone-refractory prostate cancer patients is in a range of 10–12 months and a search for new options of systemic therapy is required. Until recently, the vast majority of cytotoxic agents provided low response rate and produced unsatisfactory palliation of symptoms. A new stage in prostate cancer chemotherapy is related to trials with the use of taxoids. Although these trials documented the superiority of docetaxel-based therapy, mitoxantrone combined with hydrocortisone remains standard therapeutic option, whereas the use of docetaxel should be limited to patients without cardiovascular comorbidities and risk factors for neurotoxicity.