Clinical report of the treatment of locally advanced lung cancer.

This paper discusses the results of the treatment of 345 patients entered in the Veterans Administration Lung Group Protocol 13L. The study was activated March 1972, and closed for the patient accesion March 1975. All patients had a histological diagnosis of primary lung cancer considered clinically non-resectable or inoperable. Patients were equally randomized into two groups, radiotherapy alone or radiotherapy with chemotherapy. The analysis of the data included: treatment regimen, radiation dose, initial performance status, performance status change, cell type, duration of survival, quality of survival and age. The strongest influence on median survival was the level of radiation dose. The small cell carcinoma patients treated with radiotherapy and chemotherapy showed significant improvement in the median survival (38.2 weeks) over the patients treated with radiotherapy alone (20.6 weeks). The patients treated with radiotherapy and chemotherapy also showed improvement in performance status more frequently than the patients treated with radiotherapy alone. Other parameters of the analysis will be presented.