Unravelling oligometastatic disease from the perspective of radiation and medical oncology. Part I: non-small cell lung cancer and breast cancer

Oligometastatic disease (OMD) defines a cancer status that is intermediate between localized and widely spread metastatic disease, and can be treated with curative intent. While diagnostic imaging tools have considerably improved in recent years, unidentified micrometastases can still evade current detection techniques, allowing the disease to progress. The various OMD scenarios are mainly defined by the number of metastases, the biological and molecular tumour profiles, and the timing of the development of metastases. Increasing knowledge has contributed to the earlier and improved detection of OMD, underlining the importance of early disease control. In view of increasing OMD detection rates in current real-world clinical practice and the lack of standardized evidence-based guidelines to treat this cancer status, a board of experts from the Spanish Societies of Radiation Oncology (SEOR) and Medical Oncology (SEOM) organized a series of sessions to update the current state-of-the-art on OMD from a multidisciplinary perspective, and to discuss how results from clinical studies might translate into promising treatment options. This expert review series summarizes what is known and what it is pending clarification in the context of OMD in the scenarios of non-small cell lung cancer and breast cancer (Part I), and prostate cancer and colorectal cancer (Part II), aiming to offer specialists a pragmatic framework to help improve patient management.