The role of chest irradiation in small cell lung cancer

摘要: Chest irradiation was the main treatment of small cell lung cancer (SCLC) before 1970s; long-term survival poor (below 5% at five years). From then on, chemotherapy began to be widely used for SCLC. The high response rates yielded with gave rise a controversy over inclusion chest in combination regimens; many physicians discarded its use their therapeutic schedules, claiming that local radiotherapy barely offered benefit, if any, and significantly increased treatment-related toxicity. When alone, able achieve moderate gain (approximately 8% However, it became obvious even best series patients treated thoracic control remained major problem, since more than 50% recurrences continued observed after complete remission. A review randomized trials showed decreased risk promised approximately 10% limited disease [1–3]. This recently confirmed by comprehensive meta-analysis 13 unconfounded [4].