Radiation therapy, local tumor control, and prognosis in bronchogenic carcinoma: current status and future prospects

While the overall prognosis for cure of bronchogenic carcinoma remains poor for most patients, there is a growing body of evidence suggesting that rationally optimized local therapy may benefit a significant subset of patients. Local therapy in this context includes any systemic therapy (such as chemotherapy or immunotherapy) that enhances local tumor control in the chest. Compared with many other human epithelial cancers, the total local tumor burden is large for many nonresectable lung cancers and not within the tolerance for control by radiation alone. Thus there is growing evidence that combined surgery and radiation treatment will improve results, especially in the differentiated tumors. Proper selection of patients is important and must include histologic stratification in addition to conventional TNM staging. It is projected that much useful research can be conducted during this decade using clinical tools now available and those that are being tested in early clinical trials throughout the world. Likely candidates for such improvements are both oxic and hypoxic radiosensitizing drugs that should decrease the death rate from uncontrolled local cancer in the chest.