The importance of quality of life assessment
Menée à partir de questionnaires auprès de 313 patients atteints d'un cancer du poumon non à petites cellules de stade III et non résécable, cette étude multicentrique américano-canadienne évalue, en fonction de la dose de rayonnements reçus, leur qualité de vie trois mois et douze mois après le début d'un traitement combinant une radiothérapie et une chimiothérapie par carboplatine-paclitaxel avec ou sans cétuximab
Dose escalation of an antineoplastic modality such as radiotherapy (RT) may result in an increased therapeutic ratio with the use of effective strategies to mitigate normal tissue toxic effects. Successful execution of dose escalation using external beam RT (EBRT) approaches has yielded unintended outcomes.1,2 While increased disease control and survival are a focus of such strategies to increase the therapeutic ratio, quality of life (QOL), as measured by appropriate patient-related outcomes tools, are nearly as important. To that end, Movsas et al,3 in this issue of JAMA Oncology, document that an attempt to deliver nearly a quarter higher total dose (74 Gy vs 60 Gy) of EBRT given concomitantly with a platinum-taxane doublet for locally advanced non–small-cell lung cancer (LA-NSCLC) results in a clinically meaningful decrement in QOL at 3 months.3
JAMA Oncology , éditorial en libre accès, 2014