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| | | ![]() Surgery Alone May Offer Reasonable Overall Survival for Stage I Small Cell Lung Cancer AURORA, Colo -- February 17, 2010 -- Research published in February’s edition of the Journal of Thoracic Oncology investigated the utilisation of surgery and the subsequent need for radiotherapy (RT) when treating stage I small cell lung cancer (SCLC). Traditionally, SCLC treatment regimes include chemotherapy and radiotherapy for limited stage disease; however, the study concludes that in selected patients with early stage disease a lobectomy had an excellent overall survival without additional treatment. Researchers retrospectively evaluated the outcomes of 247 patients with stage I SCLC who underwent lobectomies; these cases were identified using the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) database. Results showed the 3- and 5-year survival rates for the patient group who underwent lobectomies without RT were 58.1% and 50.3%, respectively. For those who supplemented their surgery with RT, 3- and 5-year overall survival was 64.9% and 57.1%. “Based on our analysis, surgery without RT may offer a reasonable survival in a selected cohort of patients who undergo lobectomy, but this needs to be validated in a prospective setting,” said lead investigator James B. Yu, MD, Yale University, Boston, Massachusetts. “We cannot say conclusively whether patients who endure invasive surgeries can go without additional adjuvant radiation or chemotherapy, but looking forward, the study findings create a platform for advancing the understanding of the role of surgery in therapy.”
SOURCE: International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer
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