New radiation techniques for treatment of locally advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC)

Local control is a main step to cure NSCLC because at least 30-40% of patients die for local or regional progression of their disease. Surgery is still the more efficient approach to increase survival but radiation therapy is the only treatment that can cure patients with T1-T2 lesions if they are not suitable for surgery or refuse it. However, doses higher than 60-66 Gy must be given to improve tumor control but doses to the organs at risk (OAR) are the main limit to deliver more than 70 Gy to the planning treatment volume (PTV). The optimal solution would be to 'paint' the dose to the PTV avoiding as possible OARS, but this ballistic precision was not possible till some years ago because of both technology and respiratory movement control. In last ten years many new techniques have been made available for treating NSCLC with radiation more accurately. Some techniques like Intensity Modulated Radiotherapy (IMRT), Image Guided Radiotherapy (IGRT), Stereotactic Radiotherapy can be carried out also with a traditional linear accelerator (LINAC) updated with the new software and hardware, using or not radiopaque markers inside the tumor. On the other hand, a new generation of machines like Cyberknife or Tomotherapy have been especially projected to optimize stereotactic technique and IMRT, respectively, and respiratory gating systems are now disposable from several manufactures.