We've covered the potential value of systemic therapy for early stage NSCLC in a wide range of posts and podcasts, and to summarize what we've learned in a sentence, it's basically that chemotherapy can significantly increase progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) in patients who have undergone curative surgery for stage I-III NSCLC, but the benefit is far more convincing in patients with a high enough risk to justify the potential adverse effects of chemotherapy.

Here is a continuation of the webinar discussion I did with Dr. Pennell a month ago, in which we discussed some of the most interesting presentations on lung cancer at ASCO 2010.

Post-operative, also known as adjuvant chemotherapy, is the established method for delivering systemic therapy to improve long-term outcomes beyond what surgery alone can deliver. An alternative approach, though, is to give treatment prior to surgery.