Rate of End-of-Life Immunotherapy Is on the Rise in Advanced Melanoma, NSCLC, RCC
Source: OncLive, January 2024
The initiation of immunotherapy at the end of life among patients with advanced cancers is increasing over time, according to findings from a cohort study led by investigators at the Yale School of Medicine.
Data from the study, which were published in JAMA Oncology, demonstrated that among 242,371 patients who were analyzed the percentage of patients who received end-of-life immunotherapy increased over time for all cancers. The study included patients with stage IV melanoma (n = 20,415), non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC; n = 197,331), or renal cell carcinoma (RCC; n = 24,625). During the study period, the percentage of patients with metastatic disease who started immunotherapy within 1 month of death increased from 0.8% to 4.3% for patients with melanoma, 0.9% to 3.2% for patients with NSCLC, and 0.5% to 2.6% for patients with RCC.
“Immunotherapy has revolutionized the field of oncology over the last decade,” Sajid A Khan , MD, FACS, FSSO, senior author of the study, the codirector of Team Science at the Yale Center for Clinical Investigation, as well as section chief of hepato-pancreato-biliary (HPB) and mixed tumors and an associate professor of surgery (Oncology) at Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, said in a press release. “Because survival is substantially improved for many patients treated with these drugs, its overall application has increased across the United States.”