Introduction: This study evaluated the clinical outcomes of stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) for both pathologically diagnosed (PD) and clinically diagnosed (CD) early-stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and explored the significance of accurate expert computed tomography (CT) interpretation.
Methods: We retrospectively analyzed 95 patients with early-stage NSCLC who received SBRT at our institution. Patients were classified into CD and PD groups. Two chest radiologists retrospectively interpreted the pre-SBRT CT images to determine the tumor subtype and probability of malignancy (PM). Clinical findings, CT features, and treatment outcomes were compared between the two groups. The survival rate of the CD group was analyzed separately according to the PM grade.
Results: Median overall survival for the CD and PD groups was 6.0 and 5.4 years (P = 0.57), respectively. Median cause-specific survival was 10.2 years in the CD group and not reached in the PD group (P = 0.76). In the CD group, lung cancer mortality was lower in the low PM group (25% [1 of 4]) than in the high PM group (47.4% [9 of 19]).
Conclusion: It may be desirable to evaluate the PM of the nodule using expert CT interpretation to decide whether SBRT is indicated in CD early-stage NSCLC.
Postoperative stereotactic radiosurgery improves local tumor control in patients with metastatic brain cancer. However, the influence of timing on its therapeutic efficacy is unclear. In this study, we performed a meta-analysis and systematic literature review examining publications that reported the timing of postoperative stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) for patients with intracranial metastases. Our primary outcomes included median overall survival and rates of local and regional failure, while secondary outcomes examined the incidence of treatment-related adverse events. Correlations between median SRS timing and these variables were assessed using linear regression and publication bias was appraised via Egger's test. Our study resulted in 22 articles comprising 1338 patients. The median timing of adjuvant SRS spanned 14.5 to 41 days. There was a significant negative study-level correlation of median time to SRS with regional failure (p = 0.043, R2 = 0.32) but not with overall survival (p = 0.54, R2 = 0.03) or local failure (p = 0.16, R2 = 0.14). Additionally, there was significant heterogeneity within the reports (p<0.0001). In conclusion, our analysis demonstrated that postoperative SRS timing did not influence local failure rates which may in part be due to significant variability between individual study designs and patient demographics. Further research is warranted to elucidate the role of timing for postoperative SRS on oncologic outcomes.

