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Purpose: Clinical experience of both physicians and institutions has been shown to significantly influence the outcome of patients. We conducted this retrospective cohort study to examine its impact on the outcome of patients undergoing combined chemoradiation therapy for the treatment of locally advanced inoperable non-small-cell lung cancer.Methods and Materials: We compared the clinical data from 239 patients who were enrolled in two consecutive Radiation Therapy Oncology Group (RTOG) trials (RTOG 91-06, RTOG 92-04) according to the number of patients enrolled from each institution in either trial alone or the two trials combined.Results: Overall, patients treated at the institutions that enrolled ≥5 patients survived longer than those treated at the institutions that enrolled <5 patients (median survival 20.5 vs. 13.4 months, p = 0.0006) with a more than doubling of the 2- and 3-year survival rates (45% and 31% vs. 20% and 13%, respectively). Multivariate analyses confirmed that the number of patients enrolled from each institution was an important prognostic factor for the entire group (p = 0.001) and also for RTOG 91-06 (p = 0.05) and RTOG 92-04 (p = 0.004) when the data were analyzed separately.Conclusion: Institutional experience has a significant impact on the survival outcome of patients undergoing combined chemoradiation therapy for inoperable non-small cell lung cancer. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Editorial. Discusses non-small-cell lung cancer, which accounts for approximately 75 percent of the cases of lung cancer in the United States. Article by Miyake, et al in the July 2, 1992 issue of the `New England Journal of Medicine'; Role of the expression of a carbohydrate antigen related to blood-group antigen H, detected with the monoclonal antibody MIA-15-5 as a prognostic factor in patients with non-small-cell lung cancer; More.

Purpose: To evaluate the effect of q.d. or b.i.d. radiotherapy (RT) on the outcome of patients with locally advanced non-small-cell lung cancer.Methods and Materials: We retrospectively reviewed the outcome of 261 patients with medically inoperable or surgically unresectable Stage II-IIIB non-small-cell lung cancer, who were treated with combined modality cisplatin-based chemotherapy and RT. Chemotherapy was administered either sequentially or concurrently with thoracic RT. The median follow-up was 18 months (range 2–92). Treatment groups included sequential chemotherapy and q.d. RT (n = 109), concurrent chemotherapy and q.d. RT (n = 48), and concurrent chemotherapy and b.i.d. RT (n = 104). Of the 261 patients, 97% had a Karnofsky performance score ≥80, and 86.2% had ≤5% weight loss in the 3 months before diagnosis; 66.7% had nonsquamous cell histologic features. All but 8 patients had Stage IIIA-B disease.Results: The 2- and 5-year locoregional control rate was 42.4% and 25.7% for the q.d. group and 70.6% and 45.8% for the b.i.d. group, respectively (p = 0.0001). The 2- and 5-year disease-free survival rate was 26.7% and 6.5% for the q.d. group and 39.6% and 27.3% for the b.i.d. group, respectively (p = 0.0114). The corresponding overall survival rates were 35.9% and 9.4% for the q.d. group and 38.7% and 26.1% for the b.i.d. group. No difference was found in the rate of distant metastasis between the 2 groups. Multivariate analysis indicated that b.i.d. RT was a favorable prognostic factor for locoregional control and disease-free survival.Conclusion: RT b.i.d. significantly improved locoregional control and disease-free survival compared with RT q.d. in patients with Stage IIIA-B non-small-cell lung cancer. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]