Delivering focused radiation therapy over three to five sessions after surgery for a large brain metastasis reduced the risk of cancer returning at the surgical site compared with delivering the radiation in a single session, according to the results of the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology A071801 presented today at the plenary session of the American Society for Radiation Oncology in Boston.

Patients with small cell lung cancer (SCLC) that had spread to the brain lived a median of 17 months after focused stereotactic radiosurgery, compared with nine months after an advanced form of whole brain radiation therapy, an unexpected secondary finding from the first randomized phase 3 trial to compare the treatment approaches in this population.