A multicentric study of the GETTEC (Groupe d’Études des Tumeurs de la Tête et du Cou) about 408 clinically complete responders after Neo-Adjuvant chemotherapy for head and neck carcinomas

Clinically Complete Response (CCR) occuring after induction chemotherapy has often been considered as a good prognosis indicator. The routine use of CDDP-5-FU giving a relatively large amount of CCR, the GETTEC, a francophone study group, promoted in 1985 a multicentric study (ERCCACI: Enregistrement des Regressions Cliniques Completes Apres Chimiotherapie d’Induction) recording all these CCR in order to assess its value, the endpoints being survival, local and regional control, metastasis and second primaries. Retrospective inclusions were allowed and a total number of 408 cases were included by 8 institutions from april 1981 to may 1991: almost a half of the patients has been included by the Centre Antoine-Lacassagne (215) in Nice, followed by the Centre Oscar-Lambret (55) in Lille, Institut Gustave-Roussy (36) in Villejuif, Fondation Bergonie (31) in Bordeaux, Hopital Michallon (23) in Grenoble, Institut Jules-Bordet (20) in Brussels, Institut Curie (18) in Paris, Hopital de Rangueil (10) in Toulouse.