(2005) conducted a phase three trial of the effectiveness of Erlotinib and chemotherapy in NSCLC. They wanted to determine if erlotinib can improve the outcome of patients with NSCLC. The trial consisted of 1,079 patients, where 539 were assigned to receive oral doses of erlotinib, while 540 were assigned to receive chemotherapy, followed by a placebo. People were chosen at random on the basis of tumor measurement. Between July 18, 2001 and August 19, 2002, the starting dose assigned to the 539 people on erlotinib was 150 mg. The median survival was 10.6 months in the erlotinib arm compared to 10.5 months in the placebo arm. When the researchers looked at race, age, sex and cancer stage there was no significant survival difference. When they looked at those who smoked versus those who did not smoke, those who had never smoked in the placebo arm had a 22.5 month survival on the erlotinib arm compared to the 10.1 month survival of those who have smoked. In the erlotinib arm, those who had smoke had an 8.4 month survival compared to the placebo arm’s 9.1 month survival. At the end of the trial, a total of 408 people on the erlotinib arm had survived compared to 453 people in the placebo arm after four months. In this article, erlotinib had a longer survival, but at the end of the first four months, more people had died from erlotinib then the placebo. At the end of six months, erlotinib continued to have more …show more content…
Al (2010) conducted a phase III study on erlotinib for people whose cancer did not progress after four cycles of chemotherapy. Platinum-based chemotherapy had a median survival of 8.11 months. Seventy to eighty percent of the people who received first-line chemotherapy had progression of cancer, but when the length of the chemotherapy trials was prolonged, there was no change. The researchers wanted to show that erlotinib with continuous chemotherapy afterwards showed an increase in response duration. The SATURN study included those who those with four cycles of platinum-based chemotherapy without progression in disease, and a negative pregnancy test were assigned either oral erlotinib (150 mg) or a placebo of chemotherapy until the progression of disease or death. Between December 2005 and May 2008, 1949 people were screened and received the first line of platinum-based chemotherapy. After the chemotherapy, 428 patients (22%) had shown disease progression, 162 (8%) had died and 89 (5%) withdrew consent. 381 patients (20%) were ineligible due to deteoriation greater than 1or no tumor samples were available (37 people). A total of 889 people were able to go forth and be assigned erlotinib (437 people) and placebo of chemotherapy (447 people). PFS was discovered to longer in the erlotinib arm than the placebo arm. At the end of the first six months, 83 people who had received erlotinib versus fifty three