Lyman-Kutcher-Burman normal tissue complication probability modeling for radiation-induced esophagitis in non-small cell lung cancer patients receiving proton radiotherapy. Published in the Green Journal, this MD Anderson study developed and tested a Lyman-Kutcher-Burman (LKB) NTCP to predict radiation-induced esophagitis (RE) in NSCLC patients receiving passive-scattering proton therapy (PSPT).

For the 328 NSCLC patients treated with PSPT, grade 2-3 RE was observed in 136 (41.5%) patients, and no grade 4-5 RE was reported. The optimism-corrected AUC was 0.783 and the test showed significant agreement between predicted and observed morbidity. The authors concluded that their NTCP model showed good predictive performance, however external validation of the model is warranted.