Impact of cranial stereotactic radiotherapy associated with immunotherapy with nivolumab and ipilimumab on overall survival in patients with melanoma brain metastases: a real-world evidence

Abstract

Purpose: To evaluate the impact of cranial stereotactic radiotherapy (SRT) on overall survival (OS) of melanoma brain metastases (MBM) patients treated with combined nivolumab and ipilimumab (CNI) in a contemporary and real-world setting.

Methods/patients: The study was performed by using TriNetX, a global health network dataset of electronic medical records from patients in 49 healthcare organizations. We queried for patients with specific terms between January 2016 and December 2020 and run a propensity score matching (PSM) analysis. OS was estimated by Kaplan-Meier and log-rank test was applied.

Results: After initial query and PSM, 114 patients were selected in each cohort. Median OS was 327 days in CNI and not reached in the CNI + SRT cohort, with OS probability of 54.4 and 40.9%, respectively (log-rank P = .0057). CNI + SRT was associated with significantly decreased mortality (HR, 0.57; 95% CI 0.377-0.853; proportionality P = .0034).

Conclusions: This real-world analysis showed that CNI + SRT led to an improvement in OS compared to CNI.

Keywords: Brain metastases; Immunotherapy; Melanoma; Radiosurgery.