Background and purpose: External beam radiation therapy (EBRT) is occasionally used in the treatment of bronchial stump recurrences after complete surgical resection in patients with non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC), but no prospective study exists, so far. The objective of this review is to determine effectiveness of high-dose EBRT in this disease.
Methods: A systematic review was undertaken using electronic databases, reference lists and hand searching of journals to identify potentially eligible studies. Selection criteria included studies that provided outcome after high-dose EBRT in this disease. Six retrospective studies were reviewed, including a total of 54 patients.
Results and conclusion: High-dose EBRT appears to be an effective treatment modality for recurrent NSCLC confined to the bronchial stump after curative resection with a median survival time of approximately 30 months and 5-year survival of approximately 30%. Although small patient numbers and unclear indications for radical versus palliative EBRT may obscure the overall conclusions, among patients with intrathoracic recurrence those with bronchial stump recurrence only do better than those with non-stump recurrence. It seems there is a dose-response effect in this patient population and a predominantly local pattern of failure, both observations having an implication for future studies. The optimal dose/fractionation pattern or treatment fields must be further investigated in the future. Identification of an unfavourable subset of patients may help optimize treatment in the future by omitting high-dose, curative RT in those patients who may be best treated with palliative RT. Prospective studies on EBRT in both bronchial stump and other post-surgical recurrences are urgently needed.