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FRIDAY, June 11 (HealthDayNews) -- Two new studies suggesting chemotherapy's benefits outweigh its risks in lung cancer patients could change the way oncologists treat the killer disease.

"The treatment is effective, it doesn't knock your socks off in terms of side effects, and it's now proven to have benefits in killing off the micro-metastatic 'hiding' cancer cells before they get a chance to take hold," said Dr. Timothy L. Winton of the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, Canada.

Winton led one of two studies on the subject presented at this week's annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in New Orleans.

A second study, led by Dr. Gary M. Strauss of Brown University Medical School, found similar results.

Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer death for both men and women, with 200,000 cases occurring in North America each year. Only about 40 percent of patients diagnosed with the disease catch it early enough to be considered candidates for tumor-removing surgery. And of this group, about a third still have rogue cancer cells lurking somewhere in the body after surgery, greatly raising their chances for cancer recurrence.

Until now, "there was a real hesitancy to apply chemotherapy to these patients," Winton said, because the common wisdom among oncologists held that chemotherapy reduced quality of life while offering little long-term survival benefit.

However, the advent of powerful anticancer drugs such as cisplatin and carboplatin are giving researchers like Winton and Strauss new hope.

In the Edmonton trial, Winton's team assigned 482 patients with non-small-cell lung cancer, which makes up 80 percent of all cancer cases, to receive either a placebo or a combination of cisplatin plus another drug, vinorelbine, in the weeks following their surgery.

They found that, contrary to previous studies, 69 percent of patients on the chemotherapy combination were still alive five years later, compared with 54 percent not placed on the therapy.

"The other good news," according to Winton, "was that during chemotherapy people had some intrusions into their quality of life but they were all minor and quite tolerable, and their quality of life returned to normal quite quickly after the chemotherapy was over."

Side effects of cisplatin-vinorelbine therapy were usually limited to nausea, which in most cases was relieved by anti-nausea medications, Winton said. Some patients also experienced tingling and numbness of the hands and feet.

Similar results were found in the Brown University trial. In that study, Strauss and his colleagues had 344 lung cancer patients undergo either surgery or surgery plus a post-surgery combination of carboplatin plus a second drug, paclitaxel (Taxol).

The researchers found that, four years after surgery, 71 percent of patients in the chemotherapy group remained alive, compared to 51 percent in the group that went without post-operative chemotherapy. Again, side effects were moderate and ended quickly after the end of therapy.

The results of both these studies "give doctors an option that they hadn't had before" in treating lung cancer patients, said Heather Logan, director of Cancer Control Policy at the National Cancer Institute of Canada, which funded Winton's research.

"The bottom line," she said, "is that for someone who's going through cancer therapy, it is simply not as difficult an ordeal in terms of side effects as it was 20 years ago."

Winton agreed, although he admits the trial was a "tough sell" when he first presented it to oncologists in the field.

"There was significant resistance," he said. "Previous experience had taught us that 'chemo just makes people sick and doesn't help them -- so why bother?' But we bothered, because we knew these people were at risk and there had been real advances in the field of drug treatment and supportive care."

"We thought chemo regimens would be well tolerated and have long-term benefit," Winton said. "Luckily, we've been very fortunate to prove that that is the case, and in the process we've helped change the standard of care."

More information

The National Cancer Institute has more information on the prevention and treatment of lung cancer.

(SOURCES: Timothy L. Winton, M.D., associate professor, surgery, University of Alberta, and site chief, thoracic surgery, University of Alberta Hospital, Edmonton, Canada; Heather Logan, RN, BscN, MHFC, CHE, director, Cancer Control Policy, National Cancer Institute of Canada and the Canadian Cancer Society, Toronto; June 5, 2004, presentations, American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting, New Orleans)

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