Tropes

ScienceDaily_2014 10150.txt

#Radiotherapy: Novel lung cancer treatment meets with successan old idea of retreating lung tumors with radiation is new again especially with the technological advances seen in radiation oncology over the last decade. The Comprehensive Cancer Center of Wake Forest Baptist Medical center is one of only a handful of cancer centers that is attempting to give lung cancer patients out of treatment options a chance to keep the cancer at bay. For these patients hope lies in a second course of treatment â#repeat radiation. Two complementary papers published back-to-back recently in the journal Radiotherapy and Oncology and the Journal of Thoracic Oncology outline the treatment success at Wake Forest Baptist. â#oeone of the toughest challenges of lung cancer is what to do for patients when the cancer comes back in an area thatâ##s been treated previously with radiation treatmentâ#said James J. Urbanic M d. lead author of the studies and a radiation oncologist at Wake Forest Baptist. â#oewith some of the technological advances in radiation treatments that have occurred in the last five to 10 years weâ##re beginning to re-look at the issue and ask â#can we target the radiation precisely enough and with a high enough dose to knock the cancer back? â#Urbanic said the overall findings of the study suggest that there are some patients with recurrent lung cancers who can be treated with another definitive course of radiation therapy and still have a chance at a cure. â#oeat many cancer treatment centers these patients only get chemotherapy and have no chance at definitive treatment. The goal of treatment is solely to prevent or delay symptoms from developing and they are seen as incurableâ#he said. â#oebut with re-irradiation our study shows that maybe we can give a curative intent treatment that we couldnâ##t do in the past. Itâ##s a layer of hope for some patients that they never had before. â#For this study the researchers looked back at 11 years of clinical data. Eighty-six patients were identified who received at least two courses of thoracic radiotherapy. Of that number 33 were treated with repeat thoracic radiotherapy using stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) or accelerated hypofractionated radiotherapy (AHRT) as a component of their treatment. The median age was 66 and the majority of patients (88 percent) were treated for primary lung cancer. Average tumor size at retreatment was 2. 5 cm. Prior lung resections had been completed in 24 percent of patients. Urbanic said the typical patient is an older man or woman who got treated with either chemotherapy and radiation or radiation alone for a lung cancer that couldnâ##t be removed surgically. Theyâ##ve returned for a checkup and feel well but a CT scan shows that the cancer has returned in the area previously treated. If the cancer is just in one spot the patients get retreated with 10 radiation treatments done with the SBRT technique which is targeted tightly to just the tumor and minimizes the dose to the surrounding normal tissue. â#oewake Forest Baptist has been developing expertise in doing thisâ#Urbanic said. â#oeweâ##re finding that there are patients who are alive years later. We have seen relatively modest toxicity and a good ability to try and control the disease â#upwards of 70 percent of the time. â #But there is a higher risk of injury involved when someone is radiated a second time which is why other cancer treatment center programs might be reluctant to adopt the practice he said. â#oethis is a fairly niche effort in lung cancer care and weâ##d like to see a national level clinical trial at some pointâ#he said. â#oethe technology has gotten to the point where I think itâ##s going to allow radiation oncologists to reassess their ability so that maybe they can take risks they werenâ##t willing to take before. Eventually this practice will become more widespread. â#Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Wake Forest Baptist Medical center. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. Journal References

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