Pegfilgrastim: More Cost Effective and Equally Efficacious Option as Compared to Filgrastim in Autologous Stem Cell...

Use of growth factor after high-dose chemotherapy (HDC) and autologous peripheral blood stem cell (PBSC) support is current standard in reducing days of neutropenia. This retrospective study aims to compare the efficacy of two standard growth factors, pegfilgrastim (PEG) and filgrastim (FIL) after HDC. We collected data on 195 consecutive adult patients who received an autotransplant (myeloma, lymphoma and others) between January 2004 and December 2014 at two tertiary care centres. The primary end point was the duration of neutropenia in terms of days to reach an ANC > 0.5 × 10⁹/L. Filgrastim was given to 110 patients and PEG was given to 85 patients. Time to engraftment, defined as the time to reach an ANC of 0.5 × 10⁹/L on 2 consecutive days after the day of auto-SCT, was 12.6 days with FIL compared with 12.1 days with PEG group (p = 0.126). When comparing the total days of severe neutropenia (WBC < 0.1 × 10⁹/L), there were 5.5 days of severe neutropenia with FIL compared with 5.8 days with PEG group (p = 0.7). The duration of febrile neutropenia was an average of 5.3 days with FIL and 4.6 days with PEG (p = 0.029). The total number of antibiotic days was shorter for the patients who received PEG, being 11.08 days with PEG and 12.1 days with FIL (p = 0.184).The average cost savings per person in terms of number of days of hospitalization and number of days of total parental nutrition was 582 Rs (p = 0.512) and 6003 Rs (p = 0.018) respectively in favour of PEG arm. PEG is similar to FIL in hematological reconstitution, however it is more cost effective alternative after HDC and PBSC.