This study states that First-line (1L) immunotherapy (I-O) has improved outcomes in patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in clinical trials and is now routinely used alone or combined with chemotherapy. Although efficacy and safety of I-O therapies have been established in clinical trials, little is known about their performance and long-term efficacy in the real-world setting. We aimed to characterize real-world outcomes for patients with advanced NSCLC treated with 1L I-O therapy in the United States. Patients aged ≥18 years with confirmed advanced (stage III–IV) NSCLC who received either 1L I-O monotherapy or single-agent I-O combined with chemotherapy on or after January 1, 2016 were identified from the Flatiron Health database. Primary objectives were to examine overall survival (OS) and real-world progression-free survival. Index date was defined as date of 1L treatment initiation; data cut-off date was June 30, 2020. Among 4271 patients receiving I-O plus chemotherapy, median OS was 10.6 (95 % confidence interval [CI], 9.3–11.8) months in patients with squamous NSCLC (n=814) and 12.0 (95 % CI, 11.3–12.8) months in those with non-squamous disease (n=3457). Regardless of histology, patients with high (≥50 %) tumor programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1) expression demonstrated longer median OS vs those with low expression.
Reference link- https://www.lungcancerjournal.info/article/S0169-5002(21)00135-5/fulltext
