REVIEW SERIES Lung cancer v 5: State of the art radiotherapy for lung cancer

Radiotherapy is the most commonly used treatment modality for patients with lung cancer in the UK, with established, although frequently ignored, indications. It has a role in early, medically inoperable, and locally advanced unresectable non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), where some patients are cured, in the palliation of advanced lung cancer of all types, and in the adjuvant treatment of limited stage small cell lung cancer (SCLC) where meta-analyses have shown it increases survival. 3 Each of these indications will be reviewed, with discussion of recent meta-analyses, the impact of technical advances in radiotherapy physics, integration of chemotherapy with radiotherapy, and studies of radiotherapy scheduling in radical and palliative treatments. The review is based on a Medline search of “radiotherapy and lung cancer” from 1996 to 2001 (1549 hits) and hand searches of the Abstracts of the American Society of Clinical Oncology and the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology since 1999.