On Jul. 29, 2024, a team led by Dipesh Uprety, M.D., FACP, of the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute and the Wayne State University School of Medicine, published “Survival Trends Among Patients with Metastatic Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC) Before and After the Approval of Immunotherapy in the United States: A Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Database-Based Study.” Lead author, Yating Wang, M.D., from Ascension Providence Hospital, analyzed data from the National Cancer Institute Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database, which compiles cancer-related data covering approximately 48% of the US population. The investigators’ analysis focused on non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), which accounts for up to 90% of all cases of lung cancer and is the leading cause of cancer-related death among both men and women in the United States.

In a comparison of 100,995 patients with metastatic NSCLC treated in 2015–2020 (after immunotherapy was deemed the standard of care) with 90,807 patients with metastatic NSCLC in the pre-immunotherapy era of 2010–2014, patients in the immunotherapy era were less likely to die from any cause. The overall survival rates at one, three, and five years were 40.1% versus 33.5%, 17.8% versus 11.7%, and 10.7% versus 6.8%. The median overall survival was eight months in patients in the immunotherapy era and seven months in those in the pre-immunotherapy era.

Similarly, patients treated after immunotherapy was available were less likely to die specifically from cancer than those treated before immunotherapy. The one-, three-, and five- year cancer-specific survival rates were 44% versus 36.8%, 21.7% versus 14.4%, and 14.3% versus 9%, with a median survival of 10 months versus eight months. Survival rates remained significantly better in the immunotherapy era even after accounting for factors including age, sex, race, income, and geographical area.