Gefitinib, a tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), is used both as a single drug and concurrently with whole brain radiotherapy (WBRT) the standard treatment for brain metastases (BM), and is reported to be effective in a few small studies of patients with BM from non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). However, no study has compared the two treatment modalities. This retrospective analysis was conducted to compare the efficacy of gefitinib alone with gefitinib

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... plus concomitant WBRT in treatment of BM from NSCLC. Methods: We retrospectively reviewed 90 patients with BM from NSCLC who received gefitinib alone ( 250mg/day, gefitinib group) or with concomitant WBRT (40Gy/20f/4w, gefitinib-WBRT group) between September 2005 and September 2009 at Sun Yat-Sen University Cancer Center. Forty-five patients were in each group. Results: The objective response rate of BM was significantly higher in gefitinib-WBRT group (64.4%) compared with gefitinib group (26.7%, P<0.001). The disease control rate of BM was 71.1% in gefitinib-WBRT group and 42.2% in gefitinib group (P=0.006). The median time to progression of BM was 10.6 months in gefitinib-WBRT group and 6.57 months in gefitinib group (P<0.001). The median overall survival(OS) of gefitinib-WBRT and gefitinib alone group was 23.40 months and 14.83 months, respectively (HR, 0.432, P=0.002). Conclusion: Gefitinib plus concomitant WBRT had higher response rate of BM and significant improvement in OS compared with gefitinib alone in treatment of BM from NSCLC.