Adjuvant chemotherapy for non-small cell lung cancer: the new standard of care

Despite optimal surgical therapy for non-small cell lung cancer, approximately 50% of people ultimately die from recurrent disease. Clinical trials in the 1990s suggested a marginal survival advantage associated with adjuvant chemotherapy; however, as the benefit was relatively small and the chemotherapies were not well tolerated, adjuvant chemotherapy was not widely accepted. Over the past 3 years, several large randomized Phase III trials using modern platinum-based doublet regimens in selected patient populations have demonstrated significant survival advantages associated with adjuvant chemotherapy. The recent publication of the JBR10 study clearly exemplifies why this approach is now considered the standard of care for patients with operable non-small cell lung cancer.