According to a recent study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, researchers have found that there is a significant reduction of late toxicities in patients with extremity soft tissue sarcoma (STS) who were treated with preoperative image-guided radiation therapy (IGRT) to a reduced target volume.

For the multicenter, prospective phase II study, researchers sought to assess late toxicities in patients with STS treated with preoperative IGRT to a reduced target volume. Researchers enrolled 98 patients and assigned 12 to receive IGRT with chemotherapy (cohort A) and 86 to receive IGRT without chemotherapy (cohort B) followed by limb-sparing resection.

Cohort A was closed prematurely, and therefore only 79 patients from Cohort B were evaluable. Results showed that at a median follow-up of 3.6 years, five patients did not undergo surgery due to disease progression and five had local in-field treatment failures.


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At 2 years, 10.5% of the evaluable 57 patients assessed for late toxicities experienced at least one grade ≥2 toxicity compared with 37% of patients reported in the National Cancer Institute of Canada SR2 study in which patients received preoperative radiation therapy without IGRT (P < 0.001).

The findings suggest that the target volumes used in this study are appropriate for patients with extremity STS receiving IGRT.

References

  1. Wang D, Zhang Q, Eisenberg BL, et al. Significant reduction of late toxicities in patients with extremity sarcoma treated with image-guided radiation therapy to a reduced target volume: results of Radiation Therapy Oncology Group RTOG-0630 Trial. J Clin Oncol. 2015. [Epub ahead of print]. doi: 10.1200/JCO.2014.58.5828.