CONVERT
Settled the radiotherapy schedule debate in limited-stage disease: neither schedule was superior, so twice-daily 45 Gy remains standard and once-daily is an acceptable alternative.
OS 30 vs 25 months (HR 1.18, not significant); the trial was designed for superiority of once-daily, not non-inferiority. Toxicity similar. Both arms outperformed historical controls.
Setting
Limited-stage SCLC: twice-daily 45 Gy vs once-daily 66 Gy thoracic radiotherapy with concurrent cisplatin-etoposide
Phase
Phase 3
Sponsor
Cancer Research UK / EORTC
Registry
Headline result
No significant difference; twice-daily 45 Gy remains standard.
Reported
2017
Enrolled
547
In plain words
What these results mean for people, not percentages
Overall survivalprimarysurvival endpoint
- Median 30 vs 25 months with Twice-daily 45 Gy compared with Once-daily 66 Gy; about 5 months longer for half the group.
- A median is a midpoint: half the people did better than this and half did worse, so it is not a prediction for any one person.
- Put another way, the treated group had about 18 percent higher chance of the event at any given time (hazard ratio 1.18, likely range 0.95 to 1.45).
- The likely range for the hazard ratio crosses 1, so the difference could be due to chance.
- Overall survival counts deaths from any cause, so it is the most direct measure of whether a treatment helps people live longer.
- These results apply to the people the trial enrolled: Limited-stage SCLC: twice-daily 45 Gy vs once-daily 66 Gy thoracic radiotherapy with concurrent cisplatin-etoposide. People in a different situation may not see the same effect.
Numbers are from the trial as recorded here; see the source links in the table below. This is orientation, not medical advice: ask your team how closely the trial population matches you.