 1.4 Capecitabine plus Paclitaxel combination for esophageal cancer Capecitabine in combination with docetaxel has greater efficacy than single-agent docetaxel; the combination increased survival significantly compared with single-agent docetaxel 14.5 v 11.5 months in patients with metastatic breast cancer who experienced disease progression after anthracycline therapy . The most common treatment-related adverse events TRAEs, with capecitabine 1,250 mgm2 bid and docetaxel 75 mgm2 were alopecia, hand-foot skin reaction HFS, nausea, and fatigue. Neutropenia 15 and HFS 11 were the only grade 3 or 4 TRAEs that occurred in more than 10 of patients. In this trial the tolerable delivered dose of capecitabine for most patients was 950 mgm2 bid for 14 days. Lorenzen et al. treated 24 patients with capecitabine at a dose of 1000 mgm2 twice daily on Days 1 through 14 and docetaxel 75 mgm2 on Day 1 of 3-week cycles. The RR was 46 and median survival was 15.8 months. However, the toxicity profile was high with two 2 treatment-related deaths, a high incidence of Grade 3 or 4 neutropenia 42, and a high incidence of Grade 3 HFS 29. 