Author of

• 13794

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  P1.10 - Poster Session/ Advocacy (ID 228)

  • Event: WCLC 2015
  • Type: Poster
  • Track: Advocacy
  • Presentations: 1
  • Moderators:
  • Coordinates: 9/07/2015, 09:30 - 17:00, Exhibit Hall (Hall B+C)

  • 13799

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    P1.10-005 - Immunotherapy, What Lung Cancer and Melanoma Patients ...and Physicians, Know (ID 1058)

    09:30 - 09:30  |  Author(s): F. Hauber
    • Abstract

    Background:
    Advances in the understanding of the role of the immune system in tumor immune-surveillance have led in the last few years to the development of a series of new drugs rapidly affirmed as new paradigm of treatment for certain cancers, like advanced melanoma. The recent re-evaluation of the immunogenicity of Non-small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC) has opened a new field of research, with a new attempt to apply immunotherapy also to this disease.
    
    Methods:
    A 9 question-anonymous survey has been carried out by AIOM (Associazione Italiana di Oncologia Medica) and supported by WALCE (Women Against Lung Cancer in Europe) with the purpose to investigate patients’ knowledge about the immunotherapy, their expectations in terms of toxicity and efficacy, but also to evaluate how much physicians are becoming confident about the immunotherapy and their expected impact on daily clinical practice. The survey has been distributed, between 10th of November 2014 and 19th of March 2015, to 77 NSCLC patients (prevalently men and over 60 years old) and 89 melanoma patients (equally distributed for gender and age) within various Italian Oncologic Units. A similar electronic survey has been filled out by 128 and 68 physicians dealing with NSCLC and Melanoma, respectively, who reported to employ immunotherapy in their clinical practice in 55% and 74% of cases, respectively, and to have participated into clinical trials with immunotherapy in 39% and 41% of cases.
    
    Results:
    Patients' knowledge and expectations about immunotherapy resulted to be extremely heterogeneous. Only 19% of NSCLC patients, compared to 73% of melanoma patients, declared to have performed immunotherapy in their clinical history. Main results about patients' perception about immunotherapy are shown in Table 1. NSCLC and melanoma physicians globally reported a positive attitude for this new kind of treatment, postulating a general improving of their clinical practice in the next future (88% and 99% of cases, respectively). They have speculated a non-limiting toxicity profile of this drugs in 77% and 76% of cases, respectively. Figure 1
    
    
    
    Conclusion:
    Although the role of immunotherapy for NSCLC treatment, as already happened for melanoma in the past few years, still need a confirmation by the results of the ongoing clinical trials, patients and physicians widely express great expectation on this kind of treatment, waiting for a large anti-cancer efficacy together with a low toxicity.