Current Trends in Thoracic Radio-oncology

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer mortality, ac- counting for over 1.6 million deaths annually (1). Radio- therapy (RT) is a well-established treatment modality in many cancer types and holds a major role in the treatment of lung cancer (2-5). Recent developments in radiation therapy have drastically improved the treatment precision allowing a better target coverage while sparing healthy tissue of unwanted irradia- tion. Historically, radiation was delivered in a fractionated way. Small daily doses were given, as precision to target a le- sion was insufficient, to allow healthy tissue to recover from one day to the other. With the new possibilities of targeting a tumour lesion with millimetric precision, it becomes even possible to treat a defined volume with an ablative intention. Most of the new developments are implemented in tho- racic RT as it is a particularly challenging localisation due to, respiratory and cardiac motion, heterogeneity of tis- sue density and proximity of critical healthy tissue (spinal cord, heart, oesophagus) (6-10). We will briefly discuss the current state and future deve- lopments of RT in lung cancer