Consolidation chemotherapy after chemoradiation?: Not the right answer to not the right question?

摘要

The role of consolidation chemotherapy after concurrent chemo-radiation (chemo-RT) for patients with unresected stage III non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) remains only partially defined. Issues exist with respect to the heterogeneity of this patient population as well as of the nature of the therapies received, thus making global policies difficult to formulate and even more difficult to execute. Dr. Tsujino and colleagues1 have tried to address this by ambitiously gathering over 3400 patients from 41 studies and segregating their survival outcome by whether or not they were assigned to receive consolidation chemotherapy. The trials analyzed included mainly single-arm phase II trials, with only seven phase III studies in this data set. The authors conclude from their analysis that the intent to give consolidation chemotherapy was not associated with better survival outcome.