Chemoradiotherapy of lung cancerHigh-dose radiotherapy or concurrent chemo-radiation in lung cancer patients only induces a temporary, reversible decline in QoL
Section snippets
Study population and design
We used a longitudinal design to assess different aspects of symptoms and functioning regarding QoL in lung cancer patients treated with high-dose radiotherapy. Patients with small cell lung carcinoma (SCLC) and patients with non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC) selected for curative treatment with high-dose radiotherapy, were asked to participate in this study.
The entry criteria were as follows: cytological or histological proven NSCLC or LD-SCLC with the exclusion of mixed pathology between
Patient characteristics
Patient characteristics are depicted in Table 1. The studied dataset contained 75 patients, of which 19 (25%) were women; 45 patients (60%) had NSCLC and 30 (40%) had SCLC. The mean age of the total group was 67 years (SD 8.8). At 18 months after radiotherapy 45 patients (60%) were alive and without recurrence of disease.
Compliance with QoL assessment
At baseline (before start of radiotherapy) 85% of the patients (n = 64) completed the questionnaire (Table 1). After radiotherapy the compliance rates were 60% at 2 weeks (45 of 75
Discussion
To our knowledge, this is the first prospective QoL study on lung cancer treated with high-dose radiotherapy with or without chemotherapy, including patients with different stages and histology. The only previous study to report on QoL issues after treatment with an accelerated radiotherapy regimen was carried out by Auchter et al. [9], who investigated QoL in 30 NSCLC patients, all stage III. In their conclusion they reported that this aggressive approach did not cause a significant, long-term
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