INTRODUCTION

Economic analyses of upcoming treatments for lung cancer benefit from real-world health utility scores (HUSs) in an era of targeted therapy.

METHODS

A longitudinal cohort study at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre evaluated 1571 EQ5D-3L-derived HUSs in 475 outpatients with metastatic lung cancer across various disease states. Patients with epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) (n = 183) and anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) (n = 38) driver alterations were enriched through targeted enrolment; patients with wild-type non-small-cell lung cancer (WT NSCLC) (n = 224) and small-cell lung cancer (SCLC) (n = 30) were sampled randomly.

RESULTS

For patients stable on most appropriate treatment, the mean HUSs were 0.81 and 0.82 in patients receiving EGFR and ALK tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) respectively (with similar HUSs across agents), which were higher than patients with WT NSCLC (0.78; P = .04) and SCLC receiving chemotherapy (0.72; P = .06). In mutation-specific comparisons, disease stability on appropriate therapy resulted in significantly higher mean HUSs (P < .002-.02) than when disease was progressing (mean HUS: EGFR, 0.70; ALK, 0.69; WT NSCLC, 0.66; SCLC, 0.52). When evaluating treatment-related toxicities, significant inverse relationships were observed between HUS and the severity of fatigue and decreased appetite in the EGFR group. There was also a significant inverse relationship between the total number of clinically significant symptoms and HUS, both in patients who were EGFR-mutated and patients with WT NSCLC.

CONCLUSIONS

In a North American setting, HUSs generated from patients with metastatic lung cancer are higher in treated, stable patients carrying driver mutations. This is partially explainable by treatment toxicity and patient symptom differences. Such differences in scores should be considered in economic analyses.