The following is a summary of “Chemoimmunotherapy as the First-Line Treatment for Patients With Extensive-Stage Small-Cell Lung Cancer and an ECOG Performance Status 2 or 3,” published in the November 2023 issue of Pulmonology by Agarwal, et al.

Chemoimmunotherapy has been shown to extend both progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) in people with ES-SCLC and an ECOG performance status (PS) of 0 or 1. Chemoimmunotherapy, on the other hand, has yet to be studied much in people with ES-SCLC and an ECOG PS 2 or 3. For a study, researchers sought to determine if chemoimmunotherapy is better than chemotherapy as the first treatment for people with ES-SCLC and ECOG PS 2 or 3. In the study, 46 people who were treated at the Mayo Clinic between 2017 and 2020 for de novo ES-SCLC and an ECOG PS 2 or 3 were looked at.

Twenty people were given platinum-etoposide, and 26 were given platinum-etoposide and atezolizumab. Kaplan-Meier methods were used to figure out progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS). The chemoimmunotherapy group had a longer PFS than the chemotherapy group (4.1 months vs. 3.2 months; P = 0.0491). 

The 95% CIs for both groups were 3.8 to 6.9. The OS was 9.3 months (95% CI:: 4.9–12.8) in the chemoimmunotherapy group and 7.6 months (95% CI:: 0.6–11.9) in the chemotherapy group; P =.21.Chemoimmunotherapy extends PFS longer than chemotherapy in people who have been newly identified with ES-SCLC and have an ECOG PS 2 or 3 score.  There was no change in OS between the chemoimmunotherapy and chemotherapy groups. However, this could be because the study had a small sample size.

Source: sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1525730423001079