[Treatment of Lung Cancer Patients 2016-2022: Increased Use of Therapies Including Checkpoint Inhibitors]

Lung cancer (ICD-10-GM C34) is one of the most common cancer diseases and cause of cancer death worldwide. Costs of lung cancer treatment has increased over the past years.

This study aimed to identify therapeutic procedures causing increased expenses.

Based on the database of the Cancer Registry of Rhineland-Palatinate in the Institute for Digital Health Data, lung cancer patients diagnosed with either non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC; n=16,114) or small cell lung cancer (SCLC; n=3,323) in the years 2016-2022 were included. Distribution of tumor stages and number of administered therapies were investigated.

For NSCLC and SCLC, therapies administered showed marginal changes in the observed time span with one exception: the number of patients treated with targeted and antibody therapies showed an increase. Whereas about 3% of patients with NSCLC were given these therapies in the years 2016 and 2017, this number increased to over 5% from 2019 on. For SCLC, these therapies were reported for less than 1% of patients in the years 2016-2018; this number increased to over 4% in the years 2021 and 2022.

Therapeutic treatment of lung cancer seems to remain stable over the past years. Only targeted and antibody therapies increased during the period 2016 to 2022. The increasing number of these therapies could explain the higher costs of cancer treatment.