When Cancer Surgery is not Enough

Chemotherapy can be given before or after cancer surgery. It may be used before to shrink the tumor to make surgery easier, or it can be used afterwards to kill remaining cancer cells or cancer that has spread.

A small study conducted in France found that people with two types of lung cancer -- limited stage small-cell lung cancer (SCLC) and large-cell neuroendocrine carcinoma (LCNEC) -- live longer if they receive chemotherapy before surgery.

Learn the effectiveness rate of all surgical procedures.

The small, retrospective study involved 74 patients who had undergone lung cancer surgery at the Surgical Centre Marie Lannelongue in Le Plessis Robinson, France between 1979 and 2007.

Of this group, 45 people had chemotherapy before surgery, and 29 had only surgery.

Researchers found that people who received the pre-operative chemotherapy lived about three times longer than those who only had surgery only -- just over six years compared to 2.3 years.

There were limitations to this study, according to the authors, including the fact that a different cancer staging system was used in 1979 at the start of the study.

The authors also said, "more patients had a node involvement in the chemotherapy group, indicating that physicians may have offered chemotherapy to patients with more advanced disease."

"Our results suggest that surgical resection combined with adjuvant or neo-adjuvant chemotherapy may be an appropriate option for patients with early disease SCLC or LCNEC," the authors conclude.

This study was published in the July 2012 issue of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer's (IASLC) Journal of Thoracic Oncology.