Monitoring Chemotherapy Use for NSCLC: A View From New Zealand

By: Bryna Goeking
Posted: Monday, April 8, 2024

A surge in cancer treatments necessitates a growth in cancer treatment data collection, as indicated by a recent study conducted by Alice M. Minhinnick, MBChB, of the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Dr. Minhinnick and her team delved into the implications of a systemic anticancer therapy database in New Zealand, known as the Anti-Cancer Therapy—Nationally Organized Workstream (ACT-NOW), focusing on patients diagnosed with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Published in JCO Oncology Practice, their findings highlight how ACT-NOW may inform equitable quality improvement, funding decisions, and service designs through an initial analysis of an emerging chemotherapy .

“Our exploratory analysis served as a prototype methodology for the extraction, linking, and analysis of systemic anticancer therapy data. The selection of this specific clinical test case... showed that ACT-NOW data are relevant for the measurement and reporting of the real-world impact of newly funded cancer treatment,” the authors said.

Leveraging ACT-NOW, the authors were able to track the efficacy of chemotherapy for patients with advanced, nonsquamous NSCLC following the public funding of platinum pemetrexed–doublet chemotherapy in 2017. Before this, all 116 recorded patients treated with chemotherapy received historic platinum-doublet chemotherapy. In contrast, 94% of patients (203 of 215) treated from November 2017 to 2021 received platinum pemetrexed–doublet chemotherapy after the treatment received public funding.

The 1-year survival rates increased from 34% (43 to 128) to 42% (86 of 203) for patients who received care with platinum-pemetrexed vs historic platinum doublet. Patients in the pemetrexed-platinum group also exhibited a longer median survival of 10.1 months vs 7.7 months for the historic platinum-doublet group.

In addition, the investigators noted, ACT-NOW data can be linked to other national health databases, including cancer registrations, hospital events, and mortality data. Oncologic real-world evidence may better enforce both clinical and policy-relevant cancer care issues than clinical trials, they added.

Disclosure: For full disclosures of the study authors, visit ascopub.org.

JCO Oncology Practice

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