The use of reirradiation with intensity-modulated proton therapy (IMPT) yielded strong overall survival with limited toxicity in patients with thoracic tumors, according to a new study, potentially offering a new option in this patient population.
“Local recurrences and local failures are a challenge in lung cancer, and they are common problems,” said Jennifer Ho, MD, of MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, during a press briefing at the 2017 Multidisciplinary Thoracic Cancers Symposium in San Francisco. “Historically, patients have not had a lot of treatment options.”
IMPT can target tumors very precisely, and deposit the entire radiation dose inside a tumor with no exit dose, potentially lowering the risk of toxicity to surrounding healthy tissue. Ho presented results of a retrospective study of 27 patients with thoracic tumors who underwent reirradiation with this method between 2011 and 2016 at MD Anderson; 81% of the patients had non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC), 81% had centrally located tumors, and they were treated with IMPT a median of 29.5 months after initial radiation therapy. The study’s median follow-up period was 11.2 months.
