[Chemotherapy and survival in advanced non-small cell lung carcinoma: is pneumologists' skepticism justified?]

Few studies have assessed whether the advantage chemotherapy has been shown to have in treating advanced non-small lung carcinoma in clinical trials is transferrable to normal health care activity. This could explain the skepticism of a large number of pneumologists towards this treatment. The objective of our study was to analyze prognostic factors related to survival and to see whether cytostatic treatment was an independent predictor.

Patients enrolled in the study had been diagnosed with non-small cell carcinoma in stages IV or IIIB with pleural or N2-N3 involvement and with a performance status of 2 or below according to the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG). Survival was analyzed with regard to the following variables: age, sex, comorbidity, weight loss, laboratory test results, histological type, ECOG score, TNM staging, and treatment. The Student t test, the chi(2) test, the Kaplan-Meier method, the log-rank test, and Cox regression analysis were used in the statistical analysis.

We enrolled 190 patients (157 men and 33 women) with a mean (SD) age of 61.75 (10.85) years (range, 33-85 years). Of these patients, 144 received cytostatic treatment and 46 palliative treatment. The median survival was 31 weeks and was related to absence of weight loss (hazard ratio [HR], 1.73; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.26-2.39; P=.001), cytostatic treatment (HR, 1.85; 95% CI, 1.25-2.76; P=.002), and ECOG score of 0 to 1 (HR, 2.84; 95% CI, 1.62-5.00; P=.0001). In patients with ECOG scores of 0 to 1, weight loss and treatment were significant prognostic factors. Survival in the ECOG 2 group was 15 weeks for patients undergoing cytostatic treatment and 11 weeks for patients with symptomatic treatment.

In normal clinical practice, chemotherapy significantly prolongs survival in patients with performance status of less than 2, more time being gained if there is no associated weight loss. We conclude that the reluctance shown by many pneumologists toward using this treatment is not entirely justified.