Effectiveness of intensive clinical and radiological follow-up in patients with surgically resected NSCLC. Analysis of 2661 patients from the prospective MAGRIT trial.

Abstract Background Limited evidence is available on effectiveness of clinicoradiological follow-up of early-stage NSCLC patients. MAGRIT was a phase III adjuvant RCT conducted in surgically resected stage IB-IIIA NSCLC patients, in which all participants had a prospectively defined intensive clinicoradiological follow-up. Methods At patient-level data, we analyzed detection modality of disease recurrences and new primary lung cancer (i.e. detected by clinicoradiological scheduled exams versus by interim unscheduled exams), features associated with higher risk of locoregional and/or distant recurrence, and recurrence rates over time. Results In the 2261 patients studied, there was a significant association between the type of recurrence and the modality of detection: 88.4% (95% CI, 84%–91%) of the locoregional recurrences and 93.2% (95% CI, 84%–99%) of the new primary lung cancers were detected by scheduled exams, whereas this was only 68.7% (95% CI, 65%–73%) for distant metastases (p Conclusion Intensive follow-up is effective in detecting locoregional recurrences and second primary lung cancers, with impact on patients’ survival but did not influence the detection of distant recurrences.