A New Standard of Care for Advanced Lung Cancer

In 1995, the Non-small Cell Lung Cancer Collaborative Group published a landmark meta-analysis involving eight randomized trials that compared chemotherapy with no therapy or best supportive care for the first-line treatment of metastatic non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). 1 This meta-analysis not only showed the poor outcomes of patients with untreated NSCLC (5% overall survival at 1 year) but also showed that cisplatin-based chemotherapy could affect the natural history of this disease (15% overall survival at 1 year). Multiple subsequent trials have since compared different chemotherapy regimens, with small but incremental improvements in overall survival. One phase 3 trial showed a median . . .