Chemo+Radiation is Better than Chemo+Surgery in Some Lung Cancer Patients
March 27, 2007 by Gloria Gamat
Filed under Diseases & Conditions
In patients with stage IIIA non-small-cell lung cancer, radiation may be a better option than surgery after an initial chemotherapy treatment – according to a randomized controlled trial conducted by Jan van Meerbeeck, M.D., Ph.D., of the University Hospital of Ghent in Belgium, and colleagues from the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC).
The researchers found that surgery, compared to radiation, did not improve survival after treatment with chemotherapy.
…radiation was the preferred treatment because of its lower rate of complications and mortality in lung cancer patients.
Surgery and chemotherapy has been previously found to be superior to chemotherapy alone in this particular patient population (stage IIIA NSCLC patients) – the main reason why such combination is routinely used by cancer centers in their treatment strategy.
Now, this study’s findings are telling oncologists and physicians the opposite of what they hypothesized about.
Findings are reported in the March 21 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
Read the full report.
[article abstract]
