Lung Treatment Radiotherapy

In patients with inoperable non-small cell lung cancer and who have no evidence of distant metastases, radiotherapy is recommended to loco-regional disease because it may be associated with a survival advantage compared with placebo.

Radiotherapy is a lung cancer treatment option for patients who are not eligible for surgery. When using radio therapy, doctor often combined together with chemotherapy to increase the cure rate result, and it is usually used in treatment for non-small cell lung cancer. Radiotherapy works by using a high intensity is called radical radiotherapy. CHART (Continuous Radiation Hyper-fractionated Accelerated Radiotherapy) is a new radiotherapy technique that has fixed from the previous this lung cancer treatment management; it is works by using a high dose of radiotherapy in a short time period.


Radiotherapy also used as small cell lung cancer treatment, chest radiation is often recommended alongside chemotherapy. It is often used to treat lung cancer cases that are potentially curable.

Smaller dose of radiotherapy may used to control the symptom of this lung disease (palliative radiotherapy) for both small cell lung cancer and non-small cell lung cancer patient. Different from any other lung cancer treatment, radiotherapy can possibly used for palliative therapy without confirming the histological lung cancer diagnosis.

Radiotherapy can also used to directly inside the airway when lung cancer affects a short section of bronchus, this lung cancer treatment management called localized radiotherapy or brachytherapy. Brachytherapy usually used to treat inoperable lung cancer when it is causes blockage of a large airway.

Radiotherapy can also reducing the risk of metastasis of limited stage small cell lung cancer, doctor usually given PCI (prophylactic cranial irradiation) to the patient. This is a type of radiotherapy to the brain. Recently, cranial irradiation (PCI) also been shown to be beneficial in patient with extensive small cell lung cancer. In patients whose cancer has improved following a course of chemotherapy, PCI has been shown to reduce the cumulative risk of brain metastases within one year from 40.4% to 14.6%.

Nowadays, radiotherapy also use in the treatment for early stage of lung cancer, it’s all thanks to the radiotherapy improvements in targeting and imaging have led to the development of extra-cranial stereotactic radiation. For treating early stage of lung cancer, it is use a very high dose of radiation and delivered in a small number of sessions using stereotactic targeting techniques. This is usually used for patient that unable to undergo lung surgery due to medical co-morbidities.

Main Article - Surgical Resection for Early Non-small Cell Lung Cancer