[News for lung cancer care]

The staging and the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer are in constant evolution. Positron emission tomography has modified the diagnostic work-up and the initial evaluation of the tumoural extension, mainly for locoregional disease when a treatment with curative intent is available. An important modification of the international staging system in lung cancer has been proposed by the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) on the basis of a retrospective study including 67.725 patients originating from 19 different countries. This new international classification will be implemented in 2010. The therapeutic approach of non metastatic non-small cell lung cancer has also considerably evolved. In resectable stage II and III diseases, cisplatin-based chemotherapy adjuvant to surgery allows a significant survival improvement while concomitant administration of chemo-radiotherapy demonstrated its superiority on a sequential treatment of chemotherapy followed by radiotherapy in locoregional unresectable but irradiable neoplasms. Above conventional chemotherapy, some "targeted" therapies have shown their efficacy in selected populations. Current researches in lung cancer are now dedicated to the search of factors able to predict the sensitivity to chemotherapy, allowing a better selection of the patients susceptible to benefit from this treatment and avoiding the administration of ineffective, expensive and toxic therapies.