Real world efficacy of immunotherapy in non-small cell lung cancer

The evolution of drug therapy in solid tumors primarily leads to the increase in cancer specific survival, but inevitably raises financial burden. So far, none of the countries can venture total reimbursement with all necessary contemporary drugs for all patients. Doubling of expenses for cancer drug therapy in Russia in 2019 allowed oncologists using the most expensive treatments in more than 70 % of patients. Purpose: To evaluate efficacy of various treatment types of non-small cell lung cancer in real clinical setting. Material and methods. We included patients with histologically verified metastatic non-small cell lung cancer without activating mutations treated with first or second line therapy in 2018 - 2019. In total 287 patients were included: 230 - for the first line efficacy analysis, 100 - for the second. Time to disease progression, overall survival and objective response rate were evaluated. Results. The use of checkpoint inhibitors in accordance with all actual recommendations (first line pembrolizumab monotherapy in PD-L1 > 50 %, chemoimmunotherapy in first line or monotherapy in the second line irrespectively to PD-L1 status) decreased one-year mortality from 61 % in 2018 to 33 % in 2019, but significantly increased financial cost (p