Adding surgery to chemoradiotherapy improves local tumor control but does not increase survival of patients with locally advanced esophageal SCC. Tumor response to induction chemotherapy identifies a favorable prognostic group within these high-risk patients, regardless of the treatment group.

Although the study was closed early and statistical significance was not achieved, results point to a survival advantage for preoperative chemoradiotherapy compared with preoperative chemotherapy in adenocarcinomas of the esophagogastric junction.

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The 5-year OS and PFS rates in randomly assigned patients with resectable stage III non-small-cell lung cancer were excellent with both treatments. Both are acceptable strategies for this good-prognosis group.

This intensive multimodality treatment is feasible and demonstrates high efficacy in prognostically unfavorable LAD-NSCLC subgroups with high R0 rates and improved long-term survival compared with historical controls

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has caused radiotherapy resource pressures and led to increased risks for lung cancer patients and healthcare staff. An international group of experts in lung cancer radiotherapy established this practice recommendation pertaining to whether and how to adapt radiotherapy for lung cancer in the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: For this ESTRO & ASTRO endorsed project, 32 experts in lung cancer radiotherapy contributed to a modified Delphi consensus process. We assessed potential adaptations of radiotherapy in two pandemic scenarios. The first, an early pandemic scenario of risk mitigation, is characterized by an altered risk-benefit ratio of radiotherapy for lung cancer patients due to their increased susceptibility for severe COVID-19 infection, and minimization of patient travelling and exposure of radiotherapy staff. The second, a later pandemic scenario, is characterized by reduced radiotherapy resources requiring patient triage. Six common lung cancer cases were assessed for both scenarios: peripherally located stage I NSCLC, locally advanced NSCLC, postoperative radiotherapy after resection of pN2 NSCLC, thoracic radiotherapy and prophylactic cranial irradiation for limited stage SCLC and palliative thoracic radiotherapy for stage IV NSCLC. Results: In a risk-mitigation pandemic scenario, efforts should be made not to compromise the prognosis of lung cancer patients by departing from guideline-recommended radiotherapy practice. In that same scenario, postponement or interruption of radiotherapy treatment of COVID-19 positive patients is

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We examined the prognostic value of tumour-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) in patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck (SCCHN) after surgery and postoperative cisplatin-based chemoradiotherapy. FFPE-tissue originating from the surgery of 161 patients treated in 8 DKTK partner sites was immunohistochemically stained for CD3 and CD8. Their expression was correlated with clinicopathological characteristics as well as overall survival (OS), local progression-free survival (LPFS) and distant metastases free-survival (DMFS), also in the context of the HPV16-DNA/p16 status. After a median follow-up of 48 months (range: 4100 months), OS at 4 years was 46.5% for the entire cohort. In multivariate analysis, high CD8 expression was confirmed as an independent prognostic parameter for OS (p 5 0.002), LPFS (p 5 0.004) and DMFS (p 5 0.006), while CD3 expression lacked significance. In multivariate analysis HPV16 DNA positivity was associated with improved OS (p 5 0.025)