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A hospital Cancer Registry has recently been initiated at the Jules Bordet Institute. The collected information allows to report pathology items such as incidence date, site, morphology and stage. It permits to describe the therapeutic choices, which, broken down by organ and stage, can be compared to guidelines in a process assessment. The objectives of this registry are institutional (statistical and organisational finalities as well as quality control ones), extra-institutional (participation to the public network of cancer registration), and scientific (providing the researchers a common database that can be queried using multiple criteria to be completed by further detailed data). This paper reports on 3,587 incident cancer cases in 2000 and 2001 which were managed at the Jules Bordet Institute for the primary episode. Cancers in women represent 64.3% of all records, for only 35.7% of men, while in the Belgian National Cancer Registry, the proportion is reversed to 46.7% of women and 53.3% of men. The distribution of cancer by site is also quite different in our hospital registry where breast cancer in women, melanoma in both sexes, lung cancer and head and neck cancers in men are over-represented compared to the general population, while colorectal cancer is underrepresented in both sexes.

Encouraged by preclinical synergism between docetaxel and 5-fluorouracil (5FU), we conducted a Phase I study of docetaxel in combination with continuous i.v. infusion of 5FU in patients with advanced solid tumors to determine the maximum tolerated dose, the recommended dose for Phase II studies, and the safety and pharmacokinetic profiles of this combination. Forty-two patients with advanced solid tumors, most of whom had been previously treated, received docetaxel on day 1 as a 1-h i.v. infusion, immediately followed by a 5-day continuous i.v. infusion of 5FU, every 3 weeks without hematopoietic growth factor support. All patients were premedicated with methylprednisolone. Dose levels of docetaxel/SFU studied were (daily dose, in mg/m2) 60/300, 75/300, 75/500, 75/750, 85/750, 85/1000, and 75/1000. Forty-one patients were assessable for toxicity. The maximum tolerated dose determined during the first cycle was 1000 mg/m2/day for 5 days of 5FU with either 75 or 85 mg/m2 docetaxel. Dose-limiting toxicities at these dose levels were reversible secretory diarrhea (4 of 12 evaluable patients), stomatitis (2 patients), and febrile neutropenia (2 patients). Overall, grade 3/4 neutropenia and febrile neutropenia were seen in 63.4% and 9.8% of the patients, respectively. Four patients experienced grade 3/4 infection, which led to toxic death in one of them. There were five early deaths: (a) one was clearly treatment related; (b) two others were possibly treatment related or remotely treatment related; and (c) two deaths were not related to the study drugs. Partial responses were documented in 5 of 39 evaluable patients. Pharmacokinetic results of both drugs were consistent with those from single-agent studies. The recommended dose of this combination, which showed acceptable toxicity and antitumoral activity at various dose levels, is 85 mg/m2 docetaxel given as a 1-h i.v. infusion on day 1 immediately followed by a 5-day continuous i.v. infusion of 5FU (750 mg/m2/day). This study has been extended by adding cisplatin on day 1 of the combination of docetaxel and 5FU.