Followed by Autologous Peripheral Blood Stem Cell Rescue in Chemosensitive Patients with Metastatic Soft Tissue Sarcomas

tients refusing treatment received high-dose chemothera-py with PBSC rescue leading to grade IV hematologic toxicity without severe infections in all patients. No toxic death occurred. After a median follow-up time of 30 months, the median progression-free time was 12 months and sur-vival time was 22 months for the entire group. By intent-to-treat analysis the probability of 5-year progression-free sur-vival was significantly higher for patients allocated to HD-ICE compared to patients receiving second-line chemotherapy after failure of AI-G (14 vs. 3%; p = 0.003). The estimated 5-year overall survival between the 2 groups was different (27 % vs. not reached) but did not reach significance (p = 0.08). Conclusion: HD-ICE is feasible and promising in pa-tients with chemosensitive MSTS. A randomized phase III trial is warranted to further define the role of HD-ICE as con-solidation treatment in these patients