Concurrent chemoradiotherapy alone should remain the standard of care for the treatment of patients with locally advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), a new study published online ahead of print in the Journal of Clinical Oncology has shown.

Researchers sought to assess the efficacy of consolidation chemotherapy with docetaxel plus cisplatin after concurrent chemoradiotherapy with the same agents in patients with locally advanced NSCLC.

Researchers enrolled 437 patients and randomly assigned them to receive either concurrent chemoradiotherapy alone (observation arm) or concurrent chemoradiotherapy followed by consolidation chemotherapy (consolidation arm).


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All patients received concurrent chemoradiotherapy with docetaxel and cisplatin weekly for 6 weeks plus radiation. Patients in the consolidation arm received three additional cycles of of docetaxel and cisplatin on days 1 and 8 every 3 weeks.

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Results showed that among the 420 evaluable patients, the median progression-free survival was 8.1 months in the observation arm compared with 9.1 months in the consolidation arm (HR = 0.91; 95% CI: 0.73, 1.12; P=0.36).

Researchers found that median overall survival was 20.6 months in the observation arm and 21.8 months in the consolidation arm (HR = 0.91; 95% CI: 0.72, 1.25; P=0.44).

The findings demonstrate that consolidation chemotherapy with docetaxel plus cisplatin after concurrent chemoradiotherapy with weekly docetaxel and cisplatin failed to prolong progression-free survival compared with concurrent chemoradiotherapy alone in patients with locally advanced NSCLC.

Reference

  1. Ahn JS, Ahn YC, Kim J-H, et al. Multinational randomized phase III trial with or without consolidation chemotherapy using docetaxel and cisplatin after concurrent chemoradiation in inoperable stage III non-small-cell lung cancer: KCSG-LU05-04. J Clin Oncol. 2015. [epub ahead of print]. doi: 10.1200/JCO.2014.60.0130.