Cisplatin and Fluorouracil Concurrent to Radiotherapy in Nasopharyngeal Cancer: Is the Schedule Compatible? TO THE EDITOR: The recent phase III study reported by

rent chemoradiotherapy versus radiotherapy alone for advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma, concluded that che-moradiotherapy was superior to radiotherapy alone. Che-motherapy consisted of cisplatin 20 mg/m2/d and fluorou-racil 400 mg/m2/d, both as a 96-hour continuous infusion in an outpatient setting for two cycles, during weeks 1 and 5 of concurrent radiotherapy. Apparently, in this study, an unusual procedure was used to deliver chemotherapy— cisplatin was mixed with fluorouracil in normal saline using an ambulatory pump to allow a 96-hour continuous infu-sion. The authors state that the adopted schedule was pre-viously evaluated in terms of safety and activity. However, they refer to two studies in which the combination of the two drugs was administered as a 24-hour infusion [2,3]. Cisplatin is a well-known reactive electrophilic agen