REVIEW article
Front. Oncol.
Sec. Thoracic Oncology
Volume 15 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fonc.2025.1646608
This article is part of the Research TopicReviews in Thoracic OncologyView all 5 articles
A comparison of clinical guidelines, treatment characteristics and outcomes in small cell lung cancer between East Asia and Europe/North America
Provisionally accepted
Chi-Lu Chiang1,2
Ross Andrew Soo3Tony Mok4
Pei Jye Voon5Lucksamon Thamlikitkul6
Ying Cheng7
Hidehito Horinouchi8
Byong Chul Cho9Krista Lin Xu10
Myung-Ju Ahn11*- 1Department of Chest Medicine, Taipei Veterans General Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan
- 2School of Medicine, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Taipei, Taiwan
- 3Department of Haematology-Oncology, National University Hospital, Singapore, Singapore
- 4Department of Clinical Oncology, Faculty of Medicine, State Key Laboratory in Oncology in South China, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China
- 5Department of Radiotherapy and Oncology, Sarawak General Hospital, Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia
- 6Division of Medical Oncology, Department of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine Siriraj Hospital, Mahidol University, Bangkok, Thailand
- 7Jilin Cancer Hospital, Changchun, China
- 8Department of Thoracic Oncology, National Cancer Center Hospital, Tokyo, Japan
- 9Yonsei Cancer Center, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul, Republic of Korea
- 10Amgen, Inc., Singapore, Singapore
- 11Division of Hematology-Oncology, Department of Medicine, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul, Korea, Seoul, Republic of Korea
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Small cell lung cancer (SCLC) is an aggressive neuroendocrine carcinoma with a poor prognosis and accounts for approximately 11% of all lung cancers. Owing to the complex and aggressive nature of the disease, clinical management of SCLC is challenging. Many SCLC regional guidelines, including those from East Asia, have been developed in light of potential regional variations in socioeconomic conditions and healthcare infrastructure. However, less is known about the potential implications of the inherent population/regional differences in clinical management and the emerging treatment landscape in SCLC. Here, we review variations in the real-world patient characteristics and in diagnosis and treatment guidelines in SCLC between East Asia and Europe/North America. We also consider similarities and differences in real-world treatment patterns, as well as clinical outcomes between regions, to explore the need to adapt clinical management in SCLC.
Keywords: Asian countries, East Asia, diagnosis, Small Cell Lung Cancer, survivaloutcomes, treatment guidelines, Treatment patterns
Received: 31 Jul 2025; Accepted: 08 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Chiang, Soo, Mok, Voon, Thamlikitkul, Cheng, Horinouchi, Cho, Xu and Ahn. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Myung-Ju Ahn, silkahn@skku.edu
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.