For patients with early-stage non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who had positive margins following lobectomy, additional radiation therapy was not associated with a long-term survival benefit in a recent retrospective study.
Positive margins were associated with significantly worse 5-year survival in the study of patients with stage I-II NSCLC, which was published in the Journal of Surgical Research (2018 Mar. doi: 10.1016/j.jss.2017.10.025).
The study is one of the latest to suggest radiation may not be of benefit for treatment of positive margins after surgical resection of lung cancer, according to Brian C. Gulack, MD, MHS, department of surgery, Duke University, Durham, N.C., and his coauthors.
“Our analysis adds important findings to the literature as it focuses specifically on patients undergoing a lobectomy for stage I or II disease,” they wrote.