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Systematic review of a large cohort of patients with stage I NSCLC treated with SABR suggests that survival outcome in the short and medium term is equivalent to surgery for this population of patients regardless of co-morbidity. As selection bias cannot be assessed from the published reports and treatment related morbidity data are limited, a direct comparison between the two treatment approaches should be a priority. In the meantime, SABR can be offered to stage I patients with NSCLC as an alternative to surgery.

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Although proton therapy has been used for many decades because of their superior dose distribution over photons and reduced integral dose, their clinical implementation is still controversial. We updated a systematic review of charged particle therapy. Although still no randomised trials were identified, the field is moving quickly and we therefore also formulated ways to move forward. In our view, the aim should be to build enough proton therapy facilities with interest in research to further improve the treatment and to run the needed clinical trials.

Outputs from the framework constructed using the methods described here have the potential to be useful for clinicians, attempting to determine whether net benefits can be obtained from administering adjuvant therapy for any presenting woman; and also for policy makers, who must be able to determine the total costs and outcomes associated with different prognosis based treatment protocols as compared with more conventional treat all or treat none policies. A risk table format enabling clinicians to look up a patient's prognostic factors to determine the likely benefits (survival and quality-adjusted survival) from administering therapy may be helpful. For policy makers, it was demonstrated that the model's output could be used to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of different treatment protocols based upon prognostic information. The framework should also be valuable in evaluating the likely impact and cost-effectiveness of new potential prognostic factors and adjuvant therapies.

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Reports about breast cancer (BC) research in low and middle income countries (LMCs) are difficult to access. A bibliographic database was constituted and is described in the present review. Six databases and cancer conference proceedings were searched. The search included publications focusing on the prevention, early detection, diagnosis, treatment and supportive/palliative care of BC in LMCs (2000-2008). Biological/genetic studies or animal studies were excluded. In all, 44,096 publications were identified of which 4362 met the inclusion criteria, including 210 reports of randomized controlled trials. Only 53% of publications were indexed in Medline. Publications about treatment represented the largest contribution (29%). Mainland China produced the most published research (18%). Only 2.4% of all publications related to palliative care of BC patients. More research is needed in the fields of BC prevention, awareness-raising, early detection, and palliative care in LMCs. Systematic reviews are needed to select those studies that can be safely regarded as "best evidence".

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