The use of chemotherapy in patients with advanced NSCLC has been under investigation for several years. It has evolved from administration in the palliative care setting to integration into combined-modality curative therapy settings in patients with locoregionally-advanced disease. Following the largest meta-analysis in 1995 it was suggested that platinum-based chemotherapy was effective in treating patients with advanced disease. The absolute improvement in survival was 10% at 1 year and an increased median survival of 1.5 months. Since this analysis, platinum-based chemotherapy is considered the gold standard of treatment in this disease.
Copyright 2002 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd.