High dose radiation therapy based on normal tissue constraints with concurrent chemotherapy achieves promising survival of patients with unresectable stage III non-small cell lung cancer

Abstract Background and purpose We aimed to investigate the potential of individual isotoxic dose escalation based on normal tissue constraints (NTC), hypothesizing that high dose radiation therapy would be superior to standard-dose in concurrent chemoradiotherapy for unresectable stage III non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Materials and methods Individually prescribed radiation doses were calculated based on NTC. Patients with total tumour radiation doses ≥66 Gy were assigned to the high dose (HD, ≥66 Gy) group, and all other patients were assigned to the standard-dose (SD, Results From March 2006 to September 2012, 140 patients were enrolled and assigned to two groups: 71 patients into the HD group and 69 patients into the SD group. The median survival time (MST) was significantly higher in the HD group (33.5 months) than in the SD group (21 months), (p  Conclusions The significant positive association observed between prescribed dose and survival suggests that individualized isotoxic dose-escalated radiation based on NTC might improve survival in this cohort of stage III NSCLC Chinese patients.