(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Early findings suggest a radiation therapy that involves numerous highly-focused, potent radiation beams provides targeted tumor control in nearly all patients, reduces treatment-related illness, and may ultimately improve survival for patients with inoperable non-small cell lung cancer.

Stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) is a noninvasive cancer treatment in which numerous small, highly focused, and accurate radiation beams are used to deliver potent doses in one to five treatments to tumor targets.

Patients with inoperable early stage lung cancer are generally offered conventional radiation treatment or observed without specific cancer therapy.

"Outcomes are not ideal with either approach," Robert Timmerman, M.D., of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, was quoted as saying. "Conventional radiotherapy fails to durably control the primary lung tumor in 60 percent to 70 percent of patients. More than half of patients ultimately die specifically from progressive lung cancer with observation, and 2-year survival is less than 40 percent with either approach."

Dr. Timmerman and colleagues conducted the Radiation Therapy Oncology Group (RTOG) 0236 trial, to test SBRT in treating medically inoperable patients with early stage non-small cell lung cancer. The study included patients 18 years or older with biopsy-proven peripheral non-small cell tumors and medical conditions that would not allow surgical treatment. Radiation treatment lasted between one and a half to two weeks.

Of all the patients in the study, only one experienced a documented tumor recurrence or progression at the primary site. The three-year primary tumor control rate was 97.6 percent. Three patients had recurrence within the involved lobe; the three-year primary tumor and involved lobe control rate was 90.6 percent.

"The main finding in this prospective study was the high rate of primary tumor control (97.6 percent at three years)," the authors wrote. "Primary tumor control is an essential requirement for the cure of lung cancer. Stereotactic body radiation therapy as delivered in RTOG 0236 provided more than double the rate of primary tumor control than previous reports describing conventional radiotherapy."

SOURCE: Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), March 17, 2010