RATIONALE: Drugs used in chemotherapy use different ways to stop tumor cells from dividing so they stop growing or die. Radiation therapy uses high-energy x-rays to damage tumor cells. Combining these treatments before surgery may kill more tumor cells in patients with non-small cell lung cancer.

PURPOSE: Phase II trial to study the effectiveness of combining chemotherapy with radiation therapy before surgery in treating patients who have stage IIB non-small cell lung cancer or stage IIIA non-small cell lung cancer.

OBJECTIVES:

• Determine the response rate, duration of response, and survival in patients with bulky stage IIB or stage IIIA non-small cell lung cancer treated with paclitaxel, carboplatin, and radiotherapy followed by surgical resection.
• Assess the toxicity of this regimen in this patient population.

OUTLINE: This is a multicenter study.

Patients receive paclitaxel IV over 1 hour and carboplatin IV over 30 minutes weekly for 5 weeks. Patients also undergo concurrent radiotherapy daily 5 days a week for 5 weeks in the absence of unacceptable toxicity. At approximately 4 weeks after completion of chemoradiotherapy, patients with stable or regressive disease undergo surgical resection. If disease is unresectable, patients receive an additional 2 weeks of radiotherapy.

Patients are followed every 3 months for 2 years, every 6 months for 3 years, and then annually thereafter.

PROJECTED ACCRUAL: A total of 29-30 patients will be accrued for this study.

DISEASE CHARACTERISTICS:

• Histologically confirmed bulky stage IIB or stage IIIA non-small cell lung cancer

  • Ipsilateral mediastinal node involvement by mediastinoscopy

• No contralateral lymph node involvement

• No malignant pleural effusion

• No distant metastases

PATIENT CHARACTERISTICS:

Age:

• 18 and over

Performance status:

• ECOG 0-1

Life expectancy:

• Not specified

Hematopoietic:

• Granulocyte count at least 1,500/mm^3
• Platelet count at least 100,000/mm^3
• Hemoglobin at least 10 g/dL

Hepatic:

• ALT/AST less than 2 times upper limit of normal
• Bilirubin no greater than 1.5 mg/dL

Renal:

• Creatinine no greater than 2.0 mg/dL

Other:

• Not pregnant or nursing
• Negative pregnancy test
• Fertile patients must use effective contraception
• No other prior malignancy within the past 5 years except adequately treated carcinoma in situ of the cervix or nonmelanoma skin cancer

PRIOR CONCURRENT THERAPY:

Biologic therapy:

• Not specified

Chemotherapy:

• No prior chemotherapy

Endocrine therapy:

• Not specified

Radiotherapy:

• No prior radiotherapy

Surgery:

• See Disease Characteristics