The rapid adoption of immunotherapy in first-line treatment of elderly patients with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) has not improved survival in this cohort, a study suggests.

Noting that guidelines now recommend incorporating the checkpoint inhibitor pembrolizumab into treatment, medical oncologist Dr Kenneth Kehl, of Harvard Medical School in Boston, US, and colleagues, set out to evaluate survival in older patients who didn’t meet original clinical trial criteria.

The team examined data on US Medicare patients aged 66-89 years who had first palliative-intent systemic therapy for lung cancer between 2016 and 2020.

Among the 19,500 patients followed for a mean of 18 months, the regimens included pembrolizumab monotherapy, combined cisplatin/carboplatin (platinum) and pemetrexed disodium, combined platinum and a taxane, and combined platinum, pemetrexed and pembrolizumab.