Etoposide/platinum chemotherapy and concurrent dose-intense radiotherapy for small cell (oat cell) lung cancer

It is now becoming clear that for patients with small cell (oat cell) lung cancer that is localised to the chest at the time of presentation, there is extra benefit from the combination of multi-drug chemotherapy (and etoposide and cis-platinum are the ‘backbone’ drugs at present) and the addition of more intense chest radiotherapy early on during the chemotherapy.