A review of guidelines for lung cancer

Clinical practice guidelines include recommendations intended to optimize patient care. In the last years, the introduction of immune checkpoint inhibitors is rapidly changing lung cancer management and therefore guidelines are essential to assist clinicians in such an evolving field. We reviewed the recommendations about the use of these immune checkpoint inhibitors in clinical practice guidelines issued by three scientific societies [European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO); American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO); Italian Association of Medical Oncology (AIOM)] and one not-for-profit U.S. alliance [National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN)] in order to underline their strengths and limitations. All the examined guidelines include some recommendations about use of immune checkpoint inhibitors in lung cancer patients. ASCO guidelines have a good methodologic background while their major limitation is their slow updating. NCCN guidelines, by contrast, are continuously updated but suffer from weak methodology and poor comparative tools. ESMO guidelines introduce a tool to assess the magnitude of clinical benefit for each recommended intervention that, although with some limitations, may improve clinical decision making. AIOM guidelines apply a robust methodology, but contain recommendations only on drugs reimbursed in Italy, thus limiting their applicability in different contexts. Clinical practice guidelines are useful tools that assist clinicians treating lung cancer patients with immune checkpoint inhibitors. Their use would improve homogeneity and appropriateness, even in this rapidly evolving field.