Can Radiotherapy Improve Survival in Patients With Metastatic NSCLC?
Posted: Friday, June 1, 2018
Radiotherapy might improve the survival of patients with metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to the findings presented by R. Zhang, MD, of Cancer Center, Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University, China, and colleagues, at the European Lung Cancer Conference (ELCC) 2018 in Geneva (Abstract 1310). Thus far, the survival advantage of radiotherapy for patients with stage IV NSCLC has not been adequately evaluated, and the investigators noted that careful selection of these patients is prudent.
The researchers analyzed the data for patients with metastatic NSCLC enrolled in the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Registry from January 2010 to December 2012. Propensity-score matching was used to ensure well-balanced patient characteristics.
Radiotherapy significantly improved the survival of patients with brain metastases, especially for adenocarcinomas (P < .001). Radiotherapy was also associated with a trend toward improved overall and cancer-specific survival for patients with any metastatic sites and any histologic type (except for adenocarcinoma).
“For stage IV lung cancer patients with squamous cell carcinoma, radiotherapy for any metastatic sites could universally improve the overall survival and cancer-specific survival,” the investigators reported. “Furthermore, for stage IV squamous cell carcinoma patients without metastasis, radiotherapy, most likely to the primary site, also significantly improved the survival.”
