Treatment of Locally Advanced Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer: What We Have and Have Not Learned Over the Past Decade

Over the past decade, clinical trials for good-performance status patients with unresectable stage III non-small cell lung cancer have shown that concurrent chemoradiation therapy (chemoRT) provides improved survival over sequential chemoradiation therapy. The available data suggest that induction chemotherapy preceding concurrent chemoRT does not further improve survival. Much remains to be learned about optimizing concurrent chemoRT in this setting, including identifying doses and schedules of chemotherapy that can maintain efficacy and reduce toxicity, as well determining optimal RT doses.