Lung cancer patients with positive programmed death-ligand 1 expression endure graver postoperative pain

Postoperative pain after video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) is common in lung cancer patients, and it is unclear whether cancer itself participates in pain regulation. Programmed cell death ligand-1 (PD-L1) expressed by tumours may be analgesic. Our study aimed to detect the association between PD-L1 and acute postoperative pain.

We reviewed patients who underwent VATS for lung cancer with tumour PD-L1 expression analysed in our centre from Jan 2017 to Jul 2020. They were divided into PD-L1 (-) group and PD-L1 (+) group and were further divided into four subgroups according to opioids for postoperative analgesia: sufentanil PD-L1 (-), sufentanil PD-L1 (+), oxycodone PD-L1 (-), and oxycodone PD-L1 (+). We compared the numeric rating scale (NRS) for the first three postoperative days at rest or cough between groups.

A total of 369 patients (167 in PD-L1 (-) vs. 202 in PD-L1 (+)) were included. On the first postoperative day, NRS at cough in the PD-L1 (+) patients were higher than those in the PD-L1 (-) patients (2.91 ± 1.07 vs. 2.66 ± 1.01, p = 0.018). On the third day, NRS at cough in PD-L1 (+) patients was higher (2.50 ± 1.02 vs. 2.26 ± 1.09, p = 0.043). For patients with oxycodone, NRS was higher in PD-L1 (+) than in PD-L1 (-) (p = 0.041) at cough after surgery. In contrast, those with sufentanil did not significantly differ in NRS between groups.

Patients with PD-L1 (+) suffered graver pain in the early postoperative period after VATS for lung cancer compared with PD-L1 (-) on tumours. Analgesia with sufentanil seemed to overcome this effect better than oxycodone.

We demonstrated that patients with positive programmed cell death ligand-1 (PD-L1) on tumours suffered graver pain in the early postoperative period after video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery for lung cancer and reacted differently with opioids. It might be beneficial to adjust analgesic protocols according to tumour PD-L1 expression for individualized postoperative pain management.