Evaluation of the Treatment Duration of Japanese Patients With Pancreatic Cancer in a Real-World Setting Using a...

To clarify the treatment reality of pancreatic cancer in Japan, focusing on treatment duration and time to death.

We retrospectively analyzed Japanese hospital claims data for patients diagnosed with pancreatic cancer between April 2009 and October 2018 to investigate treatment patterns, duration of first-line chemotherapy, and time to death.

Of 81,185 eligible patients, 54.2% were male, the mean age was 71.7 years, and 23.3% (n = 18,884) received chemotherapy as primary treatment. The median treatment duration was 14.1 weeks for the 6.7% of patients who received oxaliplatin, irinotecan, fluorouracil, and leucovorin (FOLFIRINOX; recommended first-line regimen) and 16.9 weeks for the 30.2% of patients who received gemcitabine plus nab-paclitaxel (GEM + nab-PTX). Time to death for patients who received FOLFIRINOX or GEM + nab-PTX was similar (15.4 and 14.8 months, respectively). The duration of first-line chemotherapy regimens tended to increase annually for both regimens. The time to death for all first-line chemotherapy regimens also increased annually.

This study revealed the treatment reality of pancreatic cancer in the real-world Japanese setting. Treatment duration and time to death tended to increase over time and did not differ numerically between FOLFIRINOX and GEM + nab-PTX.