A trial to find the best way to give radiotherapy for people with small cell lung cancer (CONVERT)

The trial team found that having radiotherapy once a day worked as well as having it twice a day when you have it alongside chemotherapy.

547 people took part in the trial. They were put into 1 of 2 groups at random.

• 274 had radiotherapy twice a day for 3 weeks
• 273 had radiotherapy once a day 6 ½ weeks

Everyone in the trial had cisplatin and etoposide chemotherapy. These are standard chemotherapy drugs for small cell lung cancer. They had up to 6 cycles of treatment. They began radiotherapy 3 weeks after the first cycle of chemotherapy.

People having radiotherapy twice a day, had a gap of around 6 to 8 hours between treatments each day.

The trial team looked at the number of people living 2 years after treatment. They found this was:

• just under 6 out of 10 people (56%) in the group having radiotherapy twice a day
• just over 5 out of 10 people (51%) in the group having radiotherapy once a day

People who had radiotherapy twice a day had more problems with a drop in white blood cells (neutropenia). Apart from that, the side effects were similar in both groups.  

The main finding of the trial is that once daily radiotherapy does not improve the number of people living 2 years after treatment. Either once daily or twice daily radiotherapy alongside chemotherapy can be given as standard treatment for small cell lung cancer that hasn’t spread. This means patients and doctors can choose together which treatment suits them best.

Other findings included:

• finding the best dose of radiotherapy to give to this group of people – before there was no agreed dose for giving radiotherapy once or twice a day
• that people with small cell lung cancer live longer and have fewer side effects than previous studies reported - this is likely to be because of the use of modern radiotherapy techniques

The trial team concluded that once daily radiotherapy alongside chemotherapy does not improve the survival of people with small cell lung cancer that hasn’t spread elsewhere in the body. Both twice and once daily treatments can be considered for treatment in the clinic.

We have based this summary on information from the research team. The information they sent us has been reviewed by independent specialists (peer reviewed ) but may not have been published in a medical journal. The figures we quote above were provided by the research team. We have not analysed the data ourselves.