Fraser I, Lefresne S, Regan J, et al. - Researchers examined all patients with lung cancer in British Columbia treated with palliative thoracic radiotherapy (RT) in 2014 and 2015, to ascertain the utilization of palliative thoracic RT in the last 4 weeks of life, and factors connected with its use, in patients with incurable lung cancer in a population-based healthcare system. One thousand eighty-four lung cancer patients received 1,676 courses of palliative thoracic RT. The patients had a median survival of 20 weeks. In the last 4 weeks of life, delivery of 12% of palliative thoracic RT courses was reported, with more frequent use of short fractionation schedules and simple RT planning techniques near end of life (EOL). Male gender, younger age, poor performance status, metastatic disease, small cell carcinoma histology and no prior chemotherapy were noted to be correlated with the receipt of RT in the last 4 weeks of life. They recommend performing further study and standardization of quality indicators for palliative RT utilization near EOL. Whilst clarification occurs, they recommend physicians to consider the prognosis of patients with incurable lung cancer and the realistic expectation of benefit from palliative thoracic RT when contemplating treatment indications and fractionation schedules.