Pharmacotherapy of small cell lung cancer: Current state-of-the-art

Abstract

Introduction: Lung carcinoma is the leading cause of death in men and is closely related to smoking. The article focuses on the current statistics of this pathology in the world.
 Materials and methods: The literature review was carried out using PubMed database and included articles published from 2006 to 2021. The current schemes of chemotherapy and diagnostic options of small cell lung cancer were analyzed. The mechanisms of drug action on tumor cells were considered. An analysis of the publication activity in PubMed database related to pharmacotherapy of small cell lung cancer allows reporting a twofold increase in the number of publications over the period from 2007 to 2017.
 Results and discussion: A systematic review presenting staging of small cell lung cancer (SCLC) and its radiation diagnostics has been conducted. As demonstrated, there are no current methods with proven effectiveness to early detect this pathology. However, it has been found that annual low-dose CT screenings helped detect a significant number of lung cancer cases at the early stage, although, the proportion of small cell carcinoma is still very high. Analyses of clinical outcomes of small cell lung cancer have showed that cisplatin/etoposide (EP) or carboplatin/etoposide (EC) appear to be the key combinations with high treatment efficacy. The article also discusses chemotherapy for small cell lung cancer, namely and the principle of its effect on tumor cells. However, this chemotherapy remains very toxic and causes a number of life-threatening side effects. It is necessary to assess the effectiveness of chemotherapy immediately after the start of treatment in order to balance benefits and risks.
 Conclusion: The search is currently under way for less toxic but effective compounds, this fact being a crucial issue of healthcare in providing high-quality medical and pharmaceutical care for cancer patients. Chemotherapy of the pathology under study requires high costs; therefore, a pharmacoeconomical assessment of the prescription of chemotherapy for small cell lung cancer is necessary to compare the costs of treatment and its effectiveness
 Graphical Abstract