Chemotherapy and lung cancer surgery

Lung cancer patients have brighter prospects of survival after surgery. A clinical trial has shown that combination chemotherapy given after complete surgical removal of early-stage lung cancer significantly prolongs patients' survival.Researchers from the National Cancer Institute of Canada conducted a study involving 482 patients with non-small-cell lung cancer, a common type of the disease. After surgery, those treated for 16 weeks with a combination of two chemotherapy drugs - vinorelbine and cisplatin, survived an average of 94 months. But those who were given no chemotherapy after surgery, survived for 73 months. Sixty-nine percent of the vinorelbine/cisplatin group survived at least 5 years compared with 54 percent of the surgery-only group. The time before recurrence of the cancer was also significantly longer in the vinorelbine/cisplatin group.This study should solidify opinion in favour of changing the standard of care for these patients. A 15 percent overall survival benefit 5 years after surgery and prolonged disease-free survival in this population are major advances.