Background: Treatment strategies for metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) are evolving rapidly and can be highly variable. Real-world evidence of treatment patterns and outcomes can provide an understanding of our current practice and offer insights on ways to incorporate emerging therapies into our treatment paradigm. In this population-based study, we investigated treatments and outcomes of stage IV NSCLC patients from a large Canadian province.
Methods: Patients diagnosed with de novo stage IV NSCLC from April 1, 2010 to March 31, 2015 were identified. Data for baseline characteristics, treatments, and outcomes were obtained from provincial data sources, including the cancer registry and electronic medical records. We classified systemic treatments as chemotherapy, targeted therapy (anti-epidermal growth factor receptor, and anti-anaplastic lymphoma kinase) and immunotherapy (checkpoint inhibitors) and characterized clinical outcomes by treatment type.
Results: A total of 6438 patients were identified with NSCLC, of whom 3606 (56%) had de novo stage IV disease. The median age of diagnosis was 69 (range: 20 to 100) years and 52.4% were men. First-line palliative treatments included: chemotherapy in 19.5% (n=703), targeted agents in 5.7% (n=204), immunotherapy in 1% (n=1), radiotherapy in 6.8% (n=246), and best supportive care in 74.8% (n=2,698). Median overall survival (mOS) from diagnosis for the whole cohort was 3.8 months. Within subgroups, mOS was 18.0 months for targeted therapies, 9.4 months for chemotherapy, and 2.5 months for best supportive care. Only 1.0% of patients (n=34) received immunotherapy at any line.
Conclusions: Survival benefit was dependent on type of treatment received, with significantly better mOS observed with the use of small-molecule targeted therapy against epidermal growth factor receptor mutations and anaplastic lymphoma kinase rearrangements, as compared with best supportive care.
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