Correction: Clinical Predictors of Survival for Patients with Stage IV Cancer Referred to Radiation Oncology.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0124329.].

Esophagus and Contralateral Lung-Sparing IMRT for Locally Advanced Lung Cancer in the Community Hospital Setting.

BACKGROUND: The optimal technique for performing lung IMRT remains poorly defined. We hypothesize that improved dose distributions associated with normal tissue-sparing IMRT can allow safe dose escalation resulting in decreased acute and late toxicity. METHODS: We performed a retrospective analysis of 82 consecutive lung cancer patients treated with curative intent from 1/10 to 9/14. From 1/10 to 4/12, 44 patients were treated with the community standard of three-dimensional conformal radiotherapy or IMRT without specific esophagus or contralateral lung constraints (standard RT). From 5/12 to 9/14, 38 patients were treated with normal tissue-sparing IMRT with selective sparing of contralateral lung and esophagus. The study endpoints were dosimetry, toxicity, and overall survival. RESULTS: Despite higher mean prescribed radiation doses in the normal tissue-sparing IMRT cohort (64.5 vs. 60.8 Gy, p = 0.04), patients treated with normal tissue-sparing IMRT had significantly lower lung V20, V10, V5, mean lung, esophageal V60, and mean esophagus doses compared to patients treated with standard RT (p ≤ 0.001). Patients in the normal tissue-sparing IMRT group had reduced acute grade ≥3 esophagitis (0 vs. 11%, p < 0.001), acute grade ≥2 weight loss (2 vs. 16%, p = 0.04), and late grade ≥2 pneumonitis (7 vs. 21%, p = 0.02). The 2-year overall survival was 52% with normal tissue-sparing IMRT arm compared to 28% for standard RT (p = 0.015). CONCLUSION: These data provide proof of principle that suboptimal radiation dose distributions are associated with significant acute and late lung and esophageal toxicity that may result in hospitalization or even premature mortality. Strict attention to contralateral lung and esophageal dose-volume constraints are feasible in the community hospital setting without sacrificing disease control.

Clinical Predictors of Survival for Patients with Stage IV Cancer Referred to Radiation Oncology.

BACKGROUND: There is an urgent need for a robust, clinically useful predictive model for survival in a heterogeneous group of patients with metastatic cancer referred to radiation oncology. METHODS: From May 2012 to August 2013, 143 consecutive patients with stage IV cancer were prospectively evaluated by a single radiation oncologist. We retrospectively analyzed the effect of 29 patient, laboratory and tumor-related prognostic factors on overall survival using univariate analysis. Variables that were statistically significant on univariate analysis were entered into a multivariable Cox regression to identify independent predictors of overall survival. RESULTS: The median overall survival was 5.5 months. Four prognostic factors significantly predicted survival on multivariable analysis including ECOG performance status (0-1 vs. 2 vs. 3-4), number of active tumors (1 to 5 vs. ≥ 6), albumin levels (≥ 3.4 vs. 2.4 to 3.3 vs. < 2.4 and primary tumor site (Breast, Kidney or Prostate vs. Other). Risk group stratification was performed by assigning points for adverse prognostic factors resulting in very low, low, intermediate and high risk groups. The median survival was > 31.4 months for very low risk patients compared to 14.5 months for low risk, 4.1 months for intermediate risk and 1.2 months for high risk (p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: These data suggest that a model that considers performance status, extent of disease, primary tumor site and serum albumin represents a simple model to accurately predict survival for patients with stage IV cancer who are potential candidates for radiation therapy.