Defining limited stage small cell lung cancer: a radiation oncologists perspective

Description

Small cell lung cancer (SCLC) comprises 13%–15% of all diagnosed lung carcinomas and approximately 30% of those will be defined as limited stage-SCLC (LS-SCLC).1 The definition of LS-SCLC has undergone many modifications and there is no universally accepted definition till date (figure 1).2 It was first defined by the Veteran Affairs Lung cancer study Group (VALG) in 1973 and further redefined by the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) and American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) in 1989 and 2010, respectively.1 2 Considerable heterogeneity exists pertaining to which definition is used for treating patients in routine practice. As a direct consequence of this, discussions often arise in multidisciplinary tumour board meetings in which different oncologists classify the same patient differently. The subsequent images demonstrate the heterogeneity in subjective classification of patients with SCLC and the role of radiotherapy (RT) in...

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