Recent advances in diagnosis and treatment of small cell and non-small cell lung cancer

Despite much effort and many published reports, progress in diagnosing and treating lung cancer has been slow. The use of monoclonal antibodies for detection of metastasis and neuroendocrine markers for subclassification of non-small cell lung cancer into different prognostic groups may be useful in future staging and treatment. Dose-intensive chemotherapy in small cell lung cancer is still experimental, which is also the case for prophylactic cranial irradiation. Adjuvant chemotherapy for completely resected patients with non-small cell lung cancer may be associated with a marginal survival benefit, which also seems to hold true for patients with advanced disease when compared with untreated control subjects solely receiving supportive care. The modest survival benefit is achieved at the cost of increased toxicity. Neoadjuvant treatment remains a controversial issue, one of the major problems being the lack of an effective standard systemic therapy in non-small cell lung cancer.