Literature Search Strategy
MEDLINE (1966 through June 2005), CANCERLIT (1975 through June 2002), EMBASE (1988 through 2005, week 23) and the Cochrane Library (2005, Issue 4) databases were searched. "Lung neoplasms" (Medical subject heading (MeSH)) was combined with "bronchial neoplasms" (MeSH), "dihematoporphyrin ether" (MeSH), "hematoporphyrins" (MeSH), "hematoporphyrin photoradiation" (MeSH), "phototherapy" (MeSH) and each of the following phrases used as text words: "lung cancer," "lung carcinoma," "lung malignancy," "bronchogenic cancer," "bronchial cancer," "bronchogenic carcinoma," "bronchial carcinoma," "bronchogenic malignancy," "bronchial malignancy," "photofrin," "porphrin," "porphyrin," "hematoporphyrin," "dihematoporphyrin ether," "porfimer sodium." These terms were then combined with the search terms for the following study designs: practice guidelines, systematic or quantitative reviews, meta-analyses, randomized controlled trials, controlled clinical trials, clinical trials phase ii and phase iii, and multicenter studies.
In addition, conference proceedings of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) were searched for abstracts of relevant trials published between 1997 through 2005. The Physician Data Query (PDQ) clinical trials database on the Internet (http://www.cancer.gov/search/clinical_trials/) was searched for reports of new or ongoing trials. The Canadian Medical Association Infobase (http://mdm.ca/cpgsnew/cpgs/index.asp) and the National Guideline Clearinghouse (http://www.guideline.gov) were searched for existing evidence-based practice guidelines.
Relevant articles and abstracts were selected and reviewed by two reviewers, and the reference lists from those sources were searched for additional trials, as were the reference lists from relevant review articles.
Inclusion Criteria
Fully published reports or abstracts that met the following criteria were selected for inclusion:
- Systematic reviews, practice guidelines, randomized controlled trials (RCTs) or noncontrolled prospective studies of photodynamic therapy (PDT) using porfimer sodium (Photofrin®), alone or in combination with other therapies, for the treatment of stages I through IV primary, non-small cell lung cancers
- Outcomes of survival, response rate, or toxicity were reported, or for locally advanced lung cancer, the outcome of symptom palliation was reported
Exclusion Criteria
- Studies with less than ten patients
- Studies in which photodynamic therapy was used for the detection of lung cancer
- Individual case reports, pilot studies and retrospective studies
- Letters and editorials
- Papers published in a language other than English