Clinical results of stereotactic body radiotherapy for Stage I small-cell lung cancer: A single institutional experience

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the treatment outcomes of stereotactic body radiotherapy (sbrt) for stage i small-cell lung cancer (sclc). from april 2003 to september 2009,a total of eight patients with stage i sclc were treated with sbrt in our institution. in all patients,the lung tumors were proven as sclc pathologically. the patients' ages were 58-84 years (median: 74). the t-stage of the primary tumor was t1a in two,t1b in two and t2a in four patients. six of the patients were inoperable because of poor cardiac and/or pulmonary function,and two patients refused surgery. sbrt was given using 7-8 non-coplanar beams with 48 gy in four fractions. six of the eight patients received 3-4 cycles of chemotherapy using carboplatin (cbdca) + etoposide (vp-16) or cisplatin (cddp) + irinotecan (cpt-11). the follow-up period for all patients was 6-60 months (median: 32). six patients were still alive without any recurrence. one patient died from this disease and one died from another disease. the overall and disease-specific survival rate at three years was 72% and 86%,respectively. there were no patients with local progression of the lesion targeted by sbrt. only one patient had nodal recurrence in the mediastinum at 12 months after treatment. the progression-free survival rate was 71%. no grade 2 or higher sbrt-related toxicities were observed. sbrt plus chemotherapy could be an alternative to surgery with chemotherapy for inoperable patients with stage i small-cell lung cancer. however,further investigation is needed using a large series of patients. © the author 2012. published by oxford university press on behalf of the japan radiation research society and japanese society for therapeutic radiology and oncology.