, according to population-based data from a German cancer registry.
“From a public health perspective, SBRT is a good therapeutic option in terms of survival, especially for elderly and inoperable patients,” noted the study authors, led by Jörg Andreas Müller, MD, department of radiation oncology, University Hospital of Halle, Germany.
The analysis was published online in the journal Strahlentherapie Und Onkologie.
Surgery remains the standard of care for early stage NSCLC. However, many patients are not eligible for surgery because of the tumor’s location, age, frailty, or comorbidities.
Before the introduction of SBRT, conventional radiation therapy was the only reasonable option for inoperable patients, with study data showing only a small survival improvement in treated vs. untreated patients.
High-precision, image-guided SBRT offers better tumor control with limited toxicity. And while many radiation oncology centers in Germany adopted SBRT as an alternative treatment for surgery after 2000, few population-based studies evaluating SBRT’s impact on overall survival exist.
Using the German clinical cancer registry of Berlin-Brandenburg, Dr. Müller and colleagues assessed SBRT as an alternative to surgery in 558 patients with stage I and II NSCLC, diagnosed between 2000 and 2015.
More patients received surgery than SBRT (74% vs. 26%). Those who received SBRT were younger than those in the surgery group and had better Karnofsky performance status.
Among patients in the SBRT group, median survival was 19 months overall and 27 months in patients over age 75. In the surgery group, median survival was 22 months overall and 24 months in those over 75.
In a univariate survival model of a propensity-matched sample of 292 patients – half of whom received SBRT – survival rates were similar among those who underwent SBRT versus surgery (hazard ratio [HR], 1.2; P = .2).
Survival was also similar in the two treatment groups in a T1 subanalysis (HR, 1.12; P = .7) as well as in patients over age 75 (HR, 0.86; P = .5).
Better performance status scores were associated with improved survival, and higher histological grades and TNM stages were linked to higher mortality risk. The availability of histological data did not have a significant impact on survival outcomes.
Overall, the findings suggest that SBRT and surgery offer comparable survival outcomes in early stage NSCLC and “the availability of histological data might not be decisive for treatment planning,” Dr. Müller and colleagues said.
Drew Moghanaki, MD, chief of the thoracic oncology service at UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, Los Angeles, highlighted the findings on Twitter.
A thoracic surgeon from Germany responded with several concerns about the study, including the use of statistics with univariate modeling and undiagnosed lymph node (N) status.
Dr. Moghanaki replied that these “concerns summarize how we USED to think. It increasingly seems they aren’t as important as our teachers once thought they were. As we move into the future we need to reassess the data that supported these recommendations as they seem more academic than patient centered.”
The study authors reported no specific funding, and no relevant financial relationships.
A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.