Narek Shaverdian
2024-05-26
Disease
Patients treated with radiation therapy to the thorax
Abatary Discription
The goal of this study is to better characterize the acute tolerability and side effect profile of proton therapy for the management of thoracic cancers in patients age 70 years and older. The management of thoracic cancers is often multi-modal utilizing surgery, systemic therapies and radiation therapy. Patients of an older age are often at high risk for acute treatment toxicities, a pooled analysis of evaluating patients age >= 70 vs <70 treated with chemoradiation for stage III NSCLC found patients at an older age to experience more toxicity, worse survival and greater rate of death than patients at a younger age (Stinchcombe et al, JCO, 2017). Identifying strategies to optimize treatments for patients at an older is essential given the expected changes in the demographics in the United States in the coming decades. Proton therapy may be an avenue that would allow for optimization and personalization of therapy for patient of an older age. We intend to review the PCG database of patients at age 70 and older who received thoracic radiation to review tolerability and toxicity profiles.