Chemotherapy induced nausea and vomiting (CINV) is one of the most frequent adverse events in cancer patients receiving chemotherapy. Thus, preventing CINV is the key to maintaining the QOL of patients. As aprepitant, a powerful oral prophylactic for CINV, has been recommended for this purpose since it came on to the market, we retrospectively examined the adverse events induced by this drug in 36 patients (Control group 20, aprepitant group 16) with gastric cancer who received combination chemotherapy with S-1 and CDDP between November 2009 and October 2010 at Osaka Medical Center for Cancer and cardiovascular Diseases.
We examined the different types of adverse events, including emesis and hiccups, all of which were presumably induced by chemotherapy, and evaluated each of them using CTCAE v3.0 JCOG/JSCO. This confirmed the effectiveness of aprepitant against CINV both in the acute phase and delayed phase. Our results suggested that QOL was mostly improved by it, though the incidence of hiccups was higher than before. Therefore when aprepitant is given with CDDP and DEX, measures such as administering metoclopramide should be taken against hiccups.