RFA

[john]

Treatment credited with 92 percent success in early-stage NSCLC

RITA Medical Systems on June 8 announced that early results from an international multicenter prospective clinical trial show a 92 percent survival rate in stage I non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients treated with RITA radiofrequency ablation (RFA) as the sole anti-cancer treatment.

Riccardo Lencioni, M.D., professor of diagnostic and interventional radiology at the University of Pisa in Italy, presented the results at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting.

The trial focused on patients with primary NSCLC originating in the lungs that had not progressed to local lymph nodes. It included 14 patients with stage I biopsy-proven NSCLC lesions ranging in size from 1.0 to 3.0 cm. All patients were considered unfit for surgery and radiation therapy due to co-morbidity or reduced pulmonary function.

Researchers were able to successfully perform RITA RFA in a single treatment session in all of the patients. Two patients with local tumor progression required re-treatment. Cancer specific survival at one year in all patients was 92.3 percent, and overall survival at one year was 80.8 percent including death from causes other than tumor progression.