Patients with non-small cell lung cancer and positive mediastinal nodes live longer with postoperative radiation and chemotherapy than with chemotherapy alone, according to a presentation at the annual meeting of the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology.

The study was part of a larger randomized study, ANITA 1, which examined the effectiveness of postoperative chemotherapy in 840 patients with non-small cell lung cancer: Researchers found that chemotherapy improved overall survival.

In this study, radiation was not randomized nor mandatory but only recommended for patients whose disease had spread to lymph nodes. A total of 232 lung cancer patients received radiation after surgery with or without chemotherapy.

Researchers found that radiation after chemotherapy benefited patients whose cancer had spread to mediastinal lymph nodes. At that stage, those who underwent chemotherapy and radiation after surgery lived almost two years longer (47 versus 24 months) than patients who had only chemotherapy after surgery.

“This is the first time that a clinical trial has examined the effectiveness of radiation after surgery for lung cancer,” said Jean-Yves Douillard, MD, PhD, lead author of the study and a medical oncologist at the Centre Rene Gauducheau in St Herblain, France.

“The results show that radiation treatment should be considered for resected non-small cell lung cancer with involved mediastinal lymph nodes in addition to chemotherapy. The data observed in this study, however, needs to be confirmed in a prospective randomized trial of radiation, in addition to chemotherapy.”