Accelerated Radiotherapy Effective for Treatment of Unresected Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer Patients

Radiotherapy with or without chemotherapy is increasingly being used in the curative treatment for unresected non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients. However, researchers had not studied the cost-effectiveness of the treatment, until now. A new study has compared the cost-effectiveness of different modified radiotherapy strategies and traditional fractional radiotherapy in the curative treatment of unresected NSCLC patients.

The investigators, from the University Hospital of Antwerp (Edegem, Belgium), published their findings in the October 2013 issue of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer’s journal, the Journal of Thoracic Oncology (JTO). In their article, they concluded that, “accelerated radiotherapy is almost certainly more efficient than current practice and should be recommended as standard radiotherapy for the curative treatment of unresected NSCLC patients not receiving concurrent chemo-radiotherapy.” However, they did not arrive at a conclusion for which model is most cost-effective.

The researchers evaluated 10 randomized clinical trials with a population of unresected NSCLC patients. These trials accrued a total of 2,000 patients between 1989 and 2006. Most patients were male, aged 60-69 years, and had squamous cell carcinoma and stage III disease. They found that it was uncertain which modified scheme is most cost-effective and that it is unclear whether the study findings can be extrapolated to modified radiotherapy combined with concomitant chemotherapy. Therefore, further research comparing the cost-effectiveness of different types of modified radiotherapy and studying the role of chemotherapy might be advantageous.

In spite of this, the researchers stated, “it is encouraged to adopt accelerated radiotherapy for the curative treatment of unresected NSCLC patients who do not receive concurrent chemo-radiotherapy and examine its role in the context of concurrent chemo-radiotherapy.”

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University Hospital of Antwerp