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

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the safety and efficacy of the trimodality (concurrent chemoradiotherapy followed by surgical resection) approach in superior sulcus tumors.

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.