Current standard of care for treatment of locally advanced (unresectable stage II and all of stage III) non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is chemo-radiation which consists of 7 weeks of radiation and chemotherapy given at a reduced dose (as opposed to systemic dose when chemotherapy given by itself). While outcomes have improved over time they remain humbling, with current approaches associated with overall poor results both in terms of local (30% of patients have local failure) and distant control (40% of patients have distant failure) with a median overall survival of 17 months.
This study is evaluating treatment with full dose chemotherapy and stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT). SBRT uses high doses of radiation in a very precise and conformal manner, the number of treatments are much reduced versus conventional radiation (SBRT would be able to be completed in 2 weeks or less). The biologically effective dose of SBRT is much higher than that of conventional radiation; despite being a shorter number of treatments the effective radiation dose is higher. SBRT would be completed in 2 weeks and since radiation would be completed in a shorter time span, would allow patients to have higher (systemic) chemotherapy doses.
The purpose of this study is to explore SBRT in addition to systemic doses of chemotherapy in the treatment of locally advanced NSCLC.
