[Small cell lung cancer--state of the art and future perspectives].

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related death in Portugal. Almost 3500 Portuguese are expected to be diagnosed with lung cancer in 2006; approximately 20% will have small cell lung cancer (SCLC). At presentation, 25% to 30% of patients will have local or regional disease, classified as limited stage disease. The concurrent chemovalidation therapy is the best choice. Once daily thoracic radiation therapy to doses in the range of 50 Gy to 60 Gy would reflect an accepted standard of care in daily practice. Because of the increase toxicity associated with hyper fractionated radiation, this approach is often limited to select patients. Etoposide plus cisplatin are synergistic, well tolerated and result in equal or superior survival compared with other regimens. This is the standard regimen for concomitant therapy in limited stage and for extensive disease SCLC. Despite good chemo sensitivity and radio sensitivity, the prognosis of SCLC is very poor because of the early development of resistance and the associated high tendency to recurrence, making second line treatment of SCLC a problem of real medical relevance. Topotecan now offers an effective and well tolerated monosubstance for second line therapy of recurrent SCLC. There has been a significant increase in median survival for patients with SCLC receiving topotecan plus symptomatic therapy versus symptomatic therapy. The efficacy of this drug is comparable to the efficacy of the three-drug combination CAV. The tolerability can be improved by means of toxicity-adapted dosing. In elderly and in patients with performance status 2, topotecan is also well tolerated and has good efficacy. Initial studies into weekly administration also demonstrate good efficacy. The combination of topotecan with cranial radiotherapy is well tolerated and effective in the treatment of cerebral metastases of SCLC. New classes of agents, such as antiangiogenic agents including bevacizumab, small molecule tyrosine kinase inhibitors and thalidomide are being evaluated with chemotherapy for patients with extensive stage SCLC.