Perioperative RT with systemic therapy improves survival in SCLC patients

The combination of preoperative systemic therapy (PRST) with preoperative radiotherapy (PRRT) leads to significant improvements in overall survival (OS) among squamous cell lung cancer (SCLC) patients with pathologic N2, reports a study.

A total of 2,132 patients were included in the analysis. After propensity score matching (PSM), 105 patients received PRST plus PRRT, 105 received PRST alone, 446 received postoperative systemic therapy (POST) plus postoperative radiotherapy (PORT), and 446 received POST alone.

PRST with PRRT resulted in a median OS of 80 months (95 percent confidence interval [CI], 60‒121) as compared with 40 months (95 percent CI, 30‒70; p=0.016) with PRST alone (hazard ratio [HR], 0.65, 95 percent CI, 0.46‒0.92).

On the other hand, no significant difference was observed between POST plus PORT (median OS, 34 months, 95 percent CI, 30‒42) and POST alone (median OS, 41 months, 95 percent CI, 34‒51; p=0.17).

“Our results revealed that PRST combined with PRRT significantly improved OS,” the authors said.

This study used the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database from 2000 through 2021 to identify patients with pathologic N2 stage III SCLC who received PRRT combined with PRST or PORT in combination with POST. The authors used PSM for the matching of patients and Kaplan‒Meier analysis to compare OS among the different groups.