56 Lekic M et al. / Small-cell lung cancer and brain metastases TABLE 1. Patients’ characteristics (n = 251) 1.0 0.8 l0.6 a v i v r u S m0.4 u C 0.2 0.0 LD ED, without brain meta ED with brain mets GENDER Male Female AGE < 70 ≥ 70 SMOKING STATUS Current smoker Never smoker Ex-smoker Unknown STAGE LD ED - With brain metastases - Without brain metastases PERFORMANCE STATUS PS-0 PS-1 PS-2 No of pa- tients 170 81 163 88 142 2 97 10 64 34 153 43 166 42 % 68.0 32.0 65.0 35.0 57.0 0.8 38.2 4.0 25.5 13.5 61.0 17.0 66.0 17.0 of the last follow-up. OS as a function of the loca- tion of metastases was estimated by the Kaplan- Meier method, and the log-rank test was used to test the differences. Computations were done with the SPSS 16 statistical package. All reported p-val- ues are two-tailed. The study was carried out according to the Declaration of Helsinki. Results Patients In the study, 251 patients were included. Patients’ characteristics are presented in Table 1. Median age TABLE 2. Whole brain irradiation (WBRT) of 34 patients with brain metastases at diagnosis Tumour dose 30 Gy in 10 fractions 30 Gy in 12 fractions 20 Gy in 5 fractions Other regime TOTAL Radiol Oncol 2012; 46(1): 54-59. Modality 60Co Linear accelerator 60Co 60Co 60Co Linear accelerator Linear accelerator Linear accelerator 0 20 40 60 80 100 Months FIGURE 1. Survival of patients with limited stage disease (LD), extensive stage disease (ED) and according the brain metas- tases. was 65 years, majority of them were male (67%), smokers or ex-smokers (98%), with performance status from 0 to 1 (83%). At the time of diagnosis, no metastases were found in 64/251 (25.5%) pa- tients, metastases outside the brain were present in 153/251 (61.0%) patients, while brain metastases, confirmed by a CT scan, were present in 34/251 (13.5%) patients. In 8 out of 34 patients, brain me- tastases were the only site of an extensive disease. Brain metastases at diagnosis had 34 patients. All of them received whole brain irradiation (WBRT). They were irradiated with 60Co source or at linear accelerator with x-rays and high energy of 5 or 6 MeV. The most frequent tumour doses were 30 Gy in 10 fractions, 30 Gy in 12 fractions or 20 Gy in 5 fractions (Table 2). Other regimes of radiotherapy were less frequent. Seventeen out of 64 patients Frequency 8 1 2 4 6 1 6 6 34 % 23.5 2.9 5.9 11.8 17.6 2.9 17.6 17.6 100.0