The effect of consolidation chemotherapy for LA-NSCLC patients receiving concurrent chemoradiotherapy

Abstract

AimThe efficacy and safety of consolidation chemotherapy (CCT) following concurrent chemoradiotherapy are not adequately established for patients with locally advanced non-small-cell lung cancer (LA-NSCLC). In this con-text, the present study aims to evaluate the efficacy and toxicity of CCT.MethodWe retrospectively analyzed the overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) of 83 LA-NSCLC patients treated with concurrent CRT as an initial treatment with (n:20) or without CCT (n:63). All patients were cytohistologically proven to have NSCLC and diagnosed with clinical Stage III (n:48 for IIIA and n:35 for IIIB) according to the staging sys-tem published by the American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) in 2009. All patients received curative thoracic radiotherapy with concurrent platinum doublet chemotherapy.ResultsThe mean age of the lung cancer patients was 59 (±7.3); 89.2% were male (n:74),and there were only 9 female patients (10.8%).When we compared the outcome of LA-NSCLC patients treated with CCT (median 10.4 months) to the patients treated without CCT (median 13.8 months), the log-rank analysis demonstrated a statistically significant differ-ence for an inferior progression-free survival (p=0.046) in patients receiving CCT. However, no significant association was observed for overall survival (17.4, 21 months, respectively) (p>0.05). Patients with CCT presented higher levels of hematological side effects compared with the patients without CCT (p<0.001).ConclusionThe present study showed that consolidation chemo-therapy (CCT) following concurrent chemoradiotherapy did not prolong the overall survival but caused higher levels of chemotherapy-related hemato-logical toxicity in the case of LA-NSCLC.

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