Why aren’t we getting consistent results for heart dose and mortality during thoracic radiotherapy?

Abstract

Comment on: Zhang TW, Snir J, Boldt RG, et al. Is the importance of heart dose overstated in the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer? A systematic review of the literature. Debate on the connection between heart dose and mortality in non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) has been existing for years. In the article that accompanies this editorial, Zhang and colleagues (1) reported the first systemic assessment and intended meta-analysis to evaluate the relevance between cardiac dose and outcomes. Completion of this study is not trivial because an obvious rise in the amount of studies researching the correlation between cardiac dose and outcomes in NSCLC after the publication of RTOCG 0617. In addition, we do not know the strength of connection and the optimal limits of the cardiac dose yet.