Post-operative radiotherapy (PORT) used in patients with non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) following complete resection and after (neo) adjuvant chemotherapy shows no statistically significant difference in 3-year disease-free survival (DFS), according to data presented at ESMO 2020. These results give the oncology community a long-awaited answer.
PORT in completely resected NSCLC patients has been a subject of debate for many years in patients with mediastinal nodal involvement (pN2), since a meta-analysis in 1998 threw doubt on the benefits associated with it.
However, more recent times have seen better selection, (neo)-adjuvant chemotherapy in stage III resected patients, as well as improved radiotherapy and more recent non prospective studies suggested modern PORT could improve outcome.
European Society for Medical Oncology: