Management of lung cancer brain metastasis: An overview

Abstract

With the improvements in systemic treatment for lung cancer, distant metastasis to sanctuary sites such as brain has become an increasingly more important issue. The management of these patients consists of supportive care and disease-directed treatment. Combined modality treatment (surgical resection or radiosurgery, followed by whole brain radiotherapy) of brain metastases has greatly improved the local control of disease in patients with single lesion, good functional performance status, and controlled extracranial disease as demonstrated in prospective randomized studies. For patients with multiple brain metastases, conventional fractionated whole brain radiotherapy continues to be a standard and efficacious treatment. At present, experience with the use of molecularly targeted tyrosine kinase inhibitors in nonsmall cell lung cancer patients with activating mutations in the epidermal growth factor receptor gene and anaplastic lymphoma kinase gene is growing. However, their effectiveness in patients with brain metastases is not well established. In the arena of targeted therapies, vascular endothelial growth factor pathway inhibitors such as bevacizumab have shown some activity in brain metastases. Further prospective studies are necessary to facilitate selection of patient subpopulation for targeted agents in future studies.