Keywords
Abstract
Metronomic treatment consists of regular and continuous administration of low-dose chemotherapy, preferably orally, without prolonged pauses to block tumor proliferation. It has been used for many tumors and in recent years there has been an increase in its use in clinical studies, especially in the palliative setting. Thus, a narrative review was carried out on the topic of metronomic chemotherapy in solid tumors, in its aspects of the definition, biological rationale, clinical indication, and predictive and prognostic markers. A search was carried out in the PUBMED database, 575 articles were found and after detailed analysis according to the exclusion criteria, such as articles in languages other than English, use of antibody only, immunotherapy, or molecular target therapy without associated chemotherapy were removed from the analysis and included 46 of which met the selection criteria, articles in English published in the period between 2015 and 2020, among them, 32 review articles, 1 meta-analysis, 2 retrospective, 9 prospective and 2 descriptives. Clinical and preclinical evidence supports the use of metronomic chemotherapy as an alternative to standard cancer treatment and in a scenario of restricted access to new drugs, such as targeted therapy or immunotherapy, this strategy may be relevant to the management of patients.