Prise en charge des cancers bronchiques à petites cellules de stade localisé : actualisation

Limited-stage small cell lung cancer (LS-SCLC) represents 10-15% of all lung cancers, and because of its rapid tumor kinetics, less than a third of SCLC are discovered at limited stage. It has benefited less from therapeutic advances than non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The different steps and modalities of its management are well defined and codified. They involve a comprehensive staging assessment using CT scans of the chest, abdomen, and pelvis, PET-CT scans, and ideally brain imaging using MRI to avoid missing a more extensive stage of the disease, which would significantly alter the treatment strategy. The treatment consists of a combination of chemotherapy with platinum/ etoposide and radiotherapy, possibly delivered in a hyperfractionated schedule with two daily sessions followed by immunotherapy. SCLC is particularly both chemosensitive and radiosensitive, so that the initial evaluation shows frequently a complete response, and prophylactic cranial irradiation (PCI) is then recommended. Even if hyperfractionated accelerated radiotherapy (HFART) at the dose of 45Gy in 30 fractions has given the best results, most clinicians use once-daily chemoradiation regimen (60-70Gy). Studies have evaluated dose escalation either with HFRAT or with conventional fractionation (66 to 70Gy). Several trials are currently investigating the addition of immunotherapy to chemoradiation, hippocampus sparing PCI or the omission of PCI.