International journal of radiation oncology, biology, physics
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Int. J. Radiat. Oncol. Biol. Phys. · Jan 2020
Randomized Controlled TrialMinocycline Reduces Chemoradiation-Related Symptom Burden in Patients with Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer: A Phase 2 Randomized Trial.
In patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), concurrent chemoradiation therapy (CRT) exacerbates a cluster of difficult-to-manage symptoms, especially cancer-related fatigue. Minocycline is a readily available, low-cost antibiotic with antiinflammatory properties. We conducted a phase 2 randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial to investigate the effect of minocycline in reducing CRT-symptom burden in NSCLC. ⋯ Minocycline during CRT for NSCLC was feasible, had a low toxicity profile, and yielded a clinically and statistically significant positive signal in reducing symptom burden related to NSCLC and CRT. This study is a proof of concept so a larger trial in CRT patients is warranted.
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Int. J. Radiat. Oncol. Biol. Phys. · Jan 2020
Predicting 5-Year Progression and Survival Outcomes for Early Stage Non-small Cell Lung Cancer Treated with Stereotactic Ablative Radiation Therapy: Development and Validation of Robust Prognostic Nomograms.
Our purpose was to develop predictive nomograms for overall survival (OS), progression-free survival (PFS), and time-to-progression (TTP) at 5 years in patients with early-stage non-small cell lung cancer (ES-NSCLC) treated with stereotactic ablative radiation therapy (SABR). ⋯ These prognostic nomograms can accurately predict for OS, PFS, and TTP at 5 years after SABR for ES-NSCLC and may thus help identify high-risk patients who could benefit from additional systemic therapy.
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Int. J. Radiat. Oncol. Biol. Phys. · Jan 2020
Immortal Time Bias in National Cancer Database Studies.
In studies evaluating the benefit of adjuvant therapies, immortal time bias (ITB) can affect the results by incorrectly reporting a survival advantage. It does so by including all deceased patients who may have been planned to receive adjuvant therapy within the observation cohort. Given the increase in National Cancer Database (NCDB) analyses evaluating postoperative radiation therapy (PORT) as an adjuvant therapy, we sought to examine how often such studies accounted and adjusted for ITB. ⋯ Studies assessing adjuvant radiation therapy by analyzing the NCDB are susceptible to ITB, which overestimates the effect size of adjuvant therapies and can provide misleading results. Adjusting for this bias is essential for accurate data representation and to better quantify the impact of adjuvant therapies such as PORT.