Real-world evidence: A review of clinical experience in metastatic gastric cancer second-line treatment with ramucirumab

Abstract

An improvement in overall survival of patients with gastrointestinal tumors has been observed in recent years, with main factors for this being an in-depth understanding of molecular biology, determination of prognostic factors, and of course, the development of new drugs, all of which has allowed gradual but significant advances in the treatment of gastric cancer. First-line treatment has shown benefits; however, many of these patients show disease progression, which raises the challenge of optimizing the ensuing treatment lines and developing better treatment strategies. The role of second-line treatment has recently been introduced and discussed, although there is evidence regarding the benefit of some drugs such as docetaxel, paclitaxel and irinotecan in second-line treatment, with this benefit having shown a reduction of approximately 18% in the risk of death, there is still a need to discuss and analyze efficacy in overall survival, progression-free survival and toxicity profile, with a special emphasis on the appropriate choice of drugs according to efficacy, toxicity, prognostic factors, and patient characteristics. The objective of this cross-sectional study is