Small cell lung cancer (SCLC) is an aggressive tumor that nearly 15% of all newly diagnosed lung cancers. The majority of patients with SCLC present with extensive disease (ED) at diagnosis, meaning that the cancer has spread to other areas of the body. Without treatment, consisting of chemotherapy, the average survival is two to four months. Despite treatment, in most patients, disease progression will lead to death within one year. Cancer spreading to the brain is an important cause of death and has a profound negative effect on psychological and physical functioning.
In the study the, use of prophylactic cranial irradiation (PCI) to patients with extensive SCLC, 286 patients were randomized to either receive prophylactic irradiation or to being observed, following four to six cycles of chemotherapy that induced a response of their SCLC.
NextGen pointed to the fact in the report, that one year after being randomized in the trial, only 14.4 % of the patients that received PCI suffered from symptomatic spread of their cancer, compared with 40.4 % of the patients who did not receive PCI. Moreover, 27.1% of the patients receiving PCI were alive after one year, compared with 13.3% of the patients who were not prophylactically irradiated.
Moreover, NextGen commented that the trial results give weight to the further research hypothesis that thoracic radiotherapy - using the nowadays advanced radiotherapy techniques - might be beneficial to this pretreated patient group as well.
