Physicians treating recurrent lung cancer may want to consider adding computer tomography (CT) scans of the chest to their treatment regimens, according to a new study. The findings were presented at the European Respiratory Society International Congress in Amsterdam, The Netherlands (September 26-30).
Though prior studies have already confirmed CT-based follow-up programs can help detect most cases of recurrent lung cancer before the patient has any symptoms, the study is the first to link improved overall survival rates in recurrent lung cancer patients with the use of a CT-based follow-up program and could change the way oncologists manage their patients.
Cancer recurrence is a condition in which cancer returns after surgery, usually following a prolonged period of remission when there is no evidence of cancer within the body. Recurrence is different from cancer progression, which typically happens within 3 months after treatment and tends to be very aggressive, or fast growing. The likelihood of developing recurrence in one’s prognosis usually depends on a number of different factors, including the stage at diagnosis, the type of cancer, and what therapies were originally used to treat the cancer.
There are three types of lung cancer recurrence: local, when cancer comes back near the original tumor; regional, when cancer occurs in the lymph nodes, near the original tumor; and distant, when lung cancer recurs in in other parts of the body. Lung cancer that occurs elsewhere is still considered lung cancer.
The study looked at 391 patients who had surgery following a lung cancer diagnosis from 2008 to 2013. Midway through the study, researchers implemented a CT-based follow-up program in which patients would receive CT scans ever 3 months for 2 years and then every 6 months for 3 years. In 2015, the researchers looked at whether these same patients were alive and free from lung cancer.
The results revealed that the proportion of patients alive 4 years after surgery increased from 54% to almost 68%, and patients who relapsed during the first 24 months after surgery were 12 times more likely to survive.
Niels-Christian Hansen MD, from the Odense University Hospital, in Denmark and presenting author on the study, commented in a press release: "Our results show a significant improvement for survival rates for patients post-surgery in a CT follow-up program currently running in Denmark. A key strength of our study is the real-life setting we used, where we were able to demonstrate successful results in a representative sample of lung cancer patients from Denmark.”
The team is already planning to repeat the analysis in lung cancer patients treated with radiation rather than surgery, in order to ascertain whether the results could be duplicated for this patient group.
