Survival in patients with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer receiving supportive care.

AIMS: To fully describe the survival duration among Thai patients with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) receiving supportive care. SETTING: A 500-bed referral cardiothoracic centre. METHODS: Follow-up study in patients with advanced NSCLC, diagnosed from January to December 1996, who, for a variety of reasons, did not receive chemotherapy or radiation therapy. All patients were followed-up until death or defaulted. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis and log rank test were employed. RESULTS: A total of 130 patients with histologically proven NSCLC receiving supportive care were followed. 98 patients were males and 32 were females. The mean age was 61 years (SD 13.5). 82 patients were in stage 3B and 48 patients in stage 4. In stage 3B, the median survival was 13 weeks (range: 1-94, 75th centile = 7, 25th centile = 18 weeks). For stage 4, the median survival was 8 weeks (range: 0.5-31, 75th centile = 4, 25th centile = 10 weeks). For pooled data of stage 3B and 4, median survival was 11 weeks (range: 0.5-94, 75th centile = 6, 25th centile = 16 weeks). CONCLUSIONS: Survival among patients with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer is uniformly short. Considering this poor prognosis, implementation of resources and strategies to diagnose an early stage of lung cancer should be one of the highest priorities in the national health plans.