Double life expectancy from three to five years in lung cancer patients. A pioneering study at a global level has confirmed that the combined use of chemotherapy and immunotherapy before surgery can prolong life of these people, compared to traditional clinical practice. The research project of the Spanish Lung Cancer Group (GECP) has had the leadership of the Puerta de Hierro Hospital in Madrid and the participation of 18 hospitals in Spain, including the Jiménez Díaz Foundation and La Paz.
“It is, without a doubt, the consolidation of a strategy that we are already seeing how clinical practice and the perspectives of our patients are changing,” indicates the head of oncology at Puerta de Hierro and project coordinator, Mariano Provencio. The study data reflect that 69.3% of patients with operable stage IIIA non-small cell lung cancer included in this follow-up survived five years and in 65% of cases the disease did not progress.
Provencio highlights that these figures are “very important because they maintain the high success rate of the strategy and represent almost double the survival rate.” Previously, with the traditional practice, in which the surgical intervention was performed first and then the chemotherapy treatment was applied, Only 30% of the patients lived beyond three years. Likewise, researchers have observed that in 60% of cases where chemo-immunotherapy was applied, tumor remission was experienced after the third cycle. Of this total, in 92% the progression of the disease was stopped in the following years and 95.8% survived five years.
The Spanish study is the first to be carried out worldwide on the effectiveness of this treatment. The research was published this week in the journals The New England and The Lancet Oncology. The project of the Spanish Lung Cancer Group has been led by the Puerta de Hierro Hospital and has had the participation of specialists from 18 national hospitals, among which are professionals from the Jiménez Díaz and La Paz Foundation.
The use of chemo-immunotherapy before tumor operations is a process already established in clinical practice of the hospitals. However, although it was suspected, no study had analyzed the real effectiveness of this treatment compared to traditional ones. Now, almost ten years after this therapy began to be applied, the first data have arrived on the impact it has on the survival of patients five years after the intervention.
In addition to this information, researchers from the Spanish Lung Cancer Group have observed that by subjecting patients to a prior immunotherapy process, patients They acquire future protection against the reappearance of new tumors. “This allows the induction of a stronger adaptive antitumor response and the early development of immune memory that can provide long-term protection to the patient,” they explain.
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