Summary
Lack of Adherence to Treatment Guidelines for NSCLC patients was found in nearly one third of patients in a recent study.
Lack of adherence to treatment guidelines for non-small cell lung cancer shown to be significant in recent study. Nearly one-third of patients with nonoperative, node-negative non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) did not receive guideline-recommended treatment in a study published in the Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network.
Although the optimal treatment for this population is not well defined, National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) guidelines recommend treatment with definitive radiotherapy (RT) with or without sequential chemotherapy.
Lack of Adherence to Treatment Guidelines Evaluated
Researchers evaluated adherence to this recommendation in a retrospective study of 2,020 patients from the National Cancer Database. The patients were diagnosed with non-metastatic, node-negative NSCLC from 2004 to 2016. All had tumor sizes of 5 cm to 7 cm and received definitive RT.
In all, 32.2% of patients received concurrent chemotherapy and RT, which was not in line with NCCN guidelines. The remaining patients received guideline-adherent therapy of either RT alone (50.7%) or RT with sequential chemotherapy (17.1%).
Types of RT given included conventionally fractionated RT (64.3%), stereotactic body RT (21.8%), and hypofractionated RT (13.9%).
