Significance of radiation esophagitis: Conditional survival assessment in patients with non-small cell lung cancer

Abstract Purpose This study aimed to examine the effect of radiation esophagitis (RE) and the dynamics of RE on subsequent survival in NSCLC patients who underwent radiotherapy. Experimental Design Patients with NSCLC treated with fractionated thoracic radiotherapy enrolled in prospective trials were eligible. RE was graded prospectively according to CTCAE3.0 per protocol requirement weekly during-RT and 1 month after RT. This study applied conditional survival assessment which has advantage over traditional survival analysis as it assesses the survival from the event instead of from the baseline. P-value less than 0.05 was considered to be significant. The primary endpoint is overall survival. Results A total of 177 patients were eligible, with a median follow-up of 5 years. The presence of RE, the maximum RE grade, the evolution of RE and the onset timing of RE events were all correlated with subsequent survival. At all conditional time points, patients first presented with RE grade1 (initial RE1) had significant inferior subsequent survival (multivariable HRs median: 1.63, all P-values Conclusion This study comprehensively evaluated the impact of RE with conditional survival assessment and demonstrated that RE is associated with inferior survival in NSCLC patients treated with RT.