Long term follow up and analysis of long term survivors in patients treated with paclitaxel-based concurrent chemo/radiation therapy for locally advanced non-small cell lung cancer

For patients with locally advanced non-small cell lung cancer (LANSCLC), concurrent chemotherapy/radiation therapy (RT) has become the standard of care. Three multi-institutional phase II studies with paclitaxel-based chemotherapeutic regimen given concurrently with RT for patients with LANSCLC were performed from March of 1994 to May of 1997. We sought to determine mature data from this database of patients, as well as to perform analysis of a cohort of patients who have achieved long term survival (LTS) when treated with this regimen. Database of these patients was analyzed retrospectively upon longer follow up, with median follow up for the three studies being 498 days (range 11–2905 days, average 780 days). Weight loss limitation for the three studies was liberal: weight loss