Real-world impact of the platinum chemotherapy shortage on US patients with advanced cancer

The recent cisplatin and carboplatin ("platinum") chemotherapy shortage, first announced on February 10, 2023, has impacted cancer patients nationwide. Here, we quantify the extent to which the shortage affected platinum chemotherapy prescribing and short-term mortality. This cohort study included 11 797 adults with advanced solid cancers who initiated first-line therapy during the 1-year period before (February 1, 2022-February 9, 2023) or during (February 10, 2023-January 31, 2024) the platinum shortage. During the shortage, there was a 2.7% absolute reduction in platinum use (95% CI = -4.4% to -0.9%) compared to the previous year. At the peak of the shortage, there was a 15.1% absolute reduction in platinum prescribing (June 2023: 57.8% [95% CI = 53.6% to 62.0%]) compared to 1 year prior (June 2022: 72.9% [95% CI = 70.7% to 75.2%]). There was no difference in mortality before vs during the shortage (adjusted hazard ratio 1.00; 95% CI = 0.94 to 1.07) with median follow-up time of 7.6 months. Further research is required to study shortage impacts on long-term mortality.