PMID- 21718501 OWN - NLM STAT- MEDLINE DCOM- 20120409 LR - 20240317 IS - 1748-717X (Electronic) IS - 1748-717X (Linking) VI - 6 DP - 2011 Jun 30 TI - Comparison of outcomes in patients with stage III versus limited stage IV non-small cell lung cancer. PG - 80 LID - 10.1186/1748-717X-6-80 [doi] AB - BACKGROUND: Standard therapy for metastatic non small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) includes palliative systemic chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy. Recent studies of patients with limited metastases treated with curative-intent stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) have shown encouraging survival. We hypothesized that patients treated with SBRT for limited metastases have comparable outcomes with those treated with curative-intent radiation for Stage III NSCLC. METHODS: We retrospectively reviewed the records of NSCLC patients treated with curative-intent radiotherapy at the University of Rochester from 2000-2008. We identified 3 groups of patients with NSCLC: stage III, stage IV, and recurrent stage IV (initial stage I-II). All stage IV NSCLC patients treated with SBRT had /= 80%, 30% had > 5% weight loss, and 95% were smokers. The 5-year OS from date of NSCLC diagnosis for stage III, initial stage IV and recurrent stage IV was 7%, 14%, and 27% respectively. The 5-year OS from date of metastatic diagnosis was significantly (p < 0.00001) superior among those with limited metastases (