Trial of Pre-operative Chemoradiotherapy Followed by Surgical Resection in Pancoast Tumors (JCOG 9806)

Pre-operative radiotherapy has long been the community standard in Pancoast, or superior sulcus tumor. However, both complete resection rate (-50%) and long-term survival (-30%) are poor and unchanged for 40 years. Concurrent chemoradiotherapy has been shown to be beneficial in unresectable stage III non-small cell cancer. Surgery after induction chemoradiotherapy thus is a promising treatment strategy, and in fact, SWOG reported favorable results of this trimodality approach in superior sulcus tumor. The current trial is a Japanese, cooperative, multi-center, prospective one to evaluate its safety and efficacy.