Study shows SBRT for stage I NSCLC safe and effective

Data collected from 582 non-small cell lung cancer patients who underwent stereotactic body radiotherapy

2013-07-02

(Press-News.org) DENVER – Stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) is considered the treatment of choice for early-stage non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) if patients are inoperable because of additional medical conditions. This is based on several prospective phase II trials, which reported consistently high rates of local tumor control. However, these studies only included small number of patients, the methodology of SBRT varied between the studies and SBRT was mainly practiced in specialized centers. Therefore, safety and efficacy of SBRT practiced in routine clinical practice outside of study protocols is not well analyzed. A working group called Extracranial Stereotactic Radiotherapy was formed within the German Society for Radiation Oncology and this group performed a patterns-of-care and patterns-of-outcome analysis looking at safety and efficacy of SBRT for stage I NSCLC in Germany and Austria. Their research, published in the August issue of the Journal of Thoracic Oncology (JTO), concludes SBRT for stage I NSCLC was safe and effective in this multi-institutional environment. In addition, radiotherapy dosage was identified as a major treatment factor influencing local tumor control and overall survival. The researchers looked at data from 582 patients treated at 13 institutions between 1998 and 2011. Average follow-up for all patients was 21.4 months and the maximum was 144 months (12 years); follow-up was more than 3 years for 108 patients. Three-year freedom from local progression was 79.6 percent for all 582 patients. The biological effective dosage was the most significant factor influencing freedom from local progression and overall survival. No evidence of a learning curve or improvement of results with larger SBRT experience and implementation of new radiotherapy technologies was observed. The group concluded that SBRT for stage I NSCLC was safe and effective in this multi-institutional, academic environment, despite considerable inter-institutional variability and time trends in SBRT practice. ### About the IASLC: The International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) is the only global organization dedicated to the study of lung cancer. Founded in 1974, the association's membership includes more than 3,500 lung cancer specialists in 80 countries. To learn more about IASLC please visit http://www.iaslc.org.

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Silver Fire, New Mexico

2013-07-02

The Silver Fire in southern New Mexico continues to generate a lot of smoke, as seen recently on imagery from NASA's Terra satellite. The Silver Fire is burning in the Gila National Forest. As of July 1, the fire had consumed 133,625 acres. It began on June 7 from a lightning strike near Kingston, New Mexico. According to the multi-agency Incident Information System called Inciweb, the fire was 50 percent contained on July 1. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument aboard NASA's Terra satellite has infrared capabilities that can detect ...

Pregnancy as window to future health

2013-07-02

Physicians with the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine released a paper today that provides significant insight into future health conditions that women are likely to experience, and that can be detected early based on information relating to the course of pregnancy. The paper, Pregnancy as a Window to Future Health: The development of complications in pregnancy provides a new window of opportunity for early heart disease risk screening and intervention for women, acknowledges that, for most women, the demands of pregnancy on the cardiovascular and metabolic systems are ...

NASA sees heavy rainfall as Typhoon Rumbia heads for landfall in China

2013-07-02

Typhoon Rumbia developed from a low pressure area east of the Philippines and crossed the country from east to west before moving into the South China Sea. NASA's TRMM satellite flew over Rumbia as it nears southeastern China and identified areas of heavy rainfall in the southern quadrant of the storm. On Sunday, June 30, NASA infrared satellite imagery revealed tightly curved bands of thunderstorms over the southern quadrant of the storm were wrapping into the northern quadrant of the low-level center. However, in the northwestern quadrant, the quadrant that will make ...

Researchers pinpoint sources of fibrosis-promoting cells that ravage organs

2013-07-02

HOUSTON – Scientists have tracked down and quantified the diverse origins of cells that drive fibrosis, the incurable, runaway wound-healing that scars and ultimately destroys organs such as the lungs, liver and kidneys. Findings from research conducted at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston and continued at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center are reported in an advance online publication at Nature Medicine on June 30. "Answering a fundamental question about the origin of these ...

Surprise superconductor

2013-07-02

Washington, D.C.—Superconductivity is a rare physical state in which matter is able to conduct electricity—maintain a flow of electrons—without any resistance. This phenomenon can only be found in certain materials under specific low-temperature and high-pressure conditions. Research to create superconductors at higher temperatures has been ongoing for two decades with the promise of significant impact on electrical transmission. New research from a team led by Choong-Shik Yoo at Washington State University—and including Carnegie's Viktor Struzhkin, Takaki Muramatsu, ...

Altitude sickness may hinder ethnic integration in the world's highest places

2013-07-02

Ethnic segregation in nations straddling the world's steepest terrains may be reinforced by the biological tolerance different peoples have to altitude, according to one of the first studies to examine the effect of elevation on ethnic demographics. Research from Princeton University published in the journal Applied Geography suggests that people native to low-lying areas can be naturally barred from regions such as the Tibetan Plateau, the Andes or the Himalayas by altitude sickness, which is caused by low oxygen concentration in the air and can be life-threatening. ...

Doctor-patient communication about dietary supplements could use a vitamin boost

2013-07-02

Vitamins, minerals, herbs and other dietary supplements are widely available in supermarkets and drug stores across the nation without a prescription, so it's no surprise that nearly half of all Americans take them. But they do carry risks, including potentially adverse interactions with prescription drugs, and some people may even use them in place of conventional medications. So it's important that primary care physicians communicate the pros and cons of supplements with their patients. In fact, both the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of ...

New American Chemical Society video focuses on ancient secrets of alchemy

2013-07-02

The pursuit that obsessed some of the world's greatest geniuses for centuries — alchemy and its quest for the "Philosopher's Stone" that would transform lead and other base metals into gold — is the topic of a new episode in the American Chemical Society Bytesize Science video series. The video, from the world's largest scientific society, is at http://www.BytesizeScience.com. It features Laurence Principe, Ph.D., a noted historian of science and expert on alchemy, which, far from being solely a misguided pseudoscience, helped set the stage for the emergence of modern ...

Biomedical research revealing secrets of cell behavior

2013-07-02

TEMPE, Ariz -- Knowing virtually everything about how the body's cells make transitions from one state to another – for instance, precisely how particular cells develop into multi-cellular organisms – would be a major jump forward in understanding the basics of what drives biological processes. Such a leap could open doors to far-reaching advances in medical science, bioengineering and related areas. An interdisciplinary team of researchers at Arizona State University, with a partner at Imperial College London, report on taking at least a step toward better comprehension ...

Vitamin C helps control gene activity in stem cells

2013-07-02

Vitamin C affects whether genes are switched on or off inside mouse stem cells, and may thereby play a previously unknown and fundamental role in helping to guide normal development in mice, humans and other animals, a scientific team led by UC San Francisco researchers has discovered. The researchers found that vitamin C assists enzymes that play a crucial role in releasing the brakes that keep certain genes from becoming activated in the embryo soon after fertilization, when egg and sperm fuse. The discovery might eventually lead to the use of vitamin C to improve ...

A new AI-based attack framework advances multi-agent reinforcement learning by amplifying vulnerability and bypassing defenses

While exploring the cosmos, astronauts also fuel explorations of the biology of aging and cellular resilience

Design and synthesis of Zr-IR825 nanoparticles for photothermal therapy of tumor cells

[Press-News.org] Study shows SBRT for stage I NSCLC safe and effective
Data collected from 582 non-small cell lung cancer patients who underwent stereotactic body radiotherapy

Study shows SBRT for stage I NSCLC safe and effective

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: