Perioperative therapy for locoregional nonsmall-cell lung cancer.

Surgical therapy remains the treatment of choice for resectable nonsmall-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). However, the 5-year survival results of surgical therapy is 40-70%, which is far from acceptable. In this report, past results of perioperative therapies were reviewed to identify the future direction of effort in improving the therapy of NSCLC. Two perioperative modes of treatment that may possibly improve postsurgical survival were identified, i.e., neoadjuvant chemotherapy for resectable NSCLC and postoperative specific active immunotherapy.