Patients often ask me, "Why are we only doing four cycles of chemotherapy for my lung cancer?" This is a great question and one for which the answer is a moving target, based on recent data incorporating maintenance therapies. A recently published meta-analysis took another look at this question in NSCLC.

Although I've previously written about the question about optimal duration of therapy for first-line chemotherapy in advanced NSCLC (post here), these conclusions have been based on a limited number of trials. One study randomized patients to three or six cycles of rather old chemo and found no significant differences (abstract here).