CHICAGO, June 2 (Reuters) - A few preventive doses of radiation to the head significantly reduced the risk that the cancer will spread to the brain and extended patients' lives, European researchers said on Saturday.
Dr. Ben Slotman of VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, studied patients with small-cell lung cancer, which accounts for about 15 percent of all lung cancer cases in the United States.
The treatment not only stopped the spread of the cancer to the brain for many patients, but they also lived longer, Slotman's team told a meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.
"The individuals who were administered radiation therapy were twice as likely to be alive after a year," said Dr. Allen Lichter, a radiation oncologist who is the chief executive of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.
"You may not think that's news but it's pretty huge in our business," Lichter said in an interview. "Here is an area where we thought chemo was the only way to go. This will change the standard of care."
Slotman and colleagues compared 143 patients with advanced small-cell lung cancer whose tumors responded to chemotherapy with a control group of 143 patients who did not receive the treatment.
Radiation was given daily for one to two weeks at doses similar to those given to treat patients with brain tumors.
Only 14.6 percent of those who got radiation had brain tumors a year later, compared with 40.4 percent in the control group. Twenty-seven percent of the patients in the radiation group were still alive after a year, compared with only 13 percent who did not get radiation.
"I think it can immediately be translated into clinical practice," Slotman said.
When cancer spreads to the brain it can cause problems such as seizures and stroke-like symptoms as well as physical declines.
"You're not curing patients, but at least you are allowing them to live a little bit longer with a better quality of life," said Dr. Roy Herbst of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.
