Impact analysis of comorbidity and age on the tolerance of first-line single-agent chemotherapy in elderly patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer / 中华老年医学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To evaluate the impact of comorbidity and age on the tolerance of firstline single-agent chemotherapy in elderly patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer(NSCLC).Methods Clinical data of 61 elderly patients with advanced NSCLC(aged over 70 years,median age 72 years) receiving first-line single agent chemotherapy were retrospectively analyzed in this study.Performance status(PS) between 0-1 score was in 52 patients,PS 2 score in the other 9 patents.Patients were treated with gemcitabine or docitaxel as the first line chemotherapy,and the median number of chemotherapy cycles was 3.4.Comorbidity was assessed by Charlson comorbidity index (CC1).Patients with CCI equal to 0 were classified as non comorbidity group(n=26),and patients with CCI≥1 were classified as comorbidity group(n=35).Adverse reactions were graded by using the criteria of NCI-CTC v3.0.Results Age and PS could not predict adverse effects of grade 3 or 4.The incidence of hematologic toxicity of grade 3 or 4 was higher in comorbidity group than in noncomorbidity group(40.0％ vs.15.4％,x2 =4.36,P=0.037).The incidences of febrile neutropenia,non hematologic toxicity of grade 3 or 4 and treatment suspension were higher in comorbidity group than in non-comorbidity group.The most common types of comorbidity were diabetes and chronic pulmonary disease.The incidence of non-hematologic toxicity of grade 3 or 4 was increased in patients with chronic pulmonary disease as compared with patients without chronic pulmonary disease(41.4 ％vs.11.5％,x2=6.061,P=0.032).Conclusions The incidences of adverse reactions,especially hematologic toxicity of grade 3 or 4 are significantly increased in patients with comorbidity after singleagent chemotherapy.Evaluation of comorbidity before treatment is helpful to predict the tolerance of single-agent chemotherapy in elderly NSCLC patients.