Real-World Study Evaluates Racial, Ethnic Differences in NSCLC Immunotherapy Outcomes

Gene Ho, MPH, of Flatiron Health, joined Lung Cancers Today at the IASLC 2024 World Conference on Lung Cancer to discuss his poster presentation on racial and ethnic differences in real-world adverse events and overall survival in patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) receiving immunotherapy.

“At Flatiron, we’re extremely committed to shining a light on health inequities and disparities within cancer care, and this had come up as a potential interest within our team,” Ho said. “We knew that there are access issues with immunotherapies, and we wanted to see if there were any differences amongst patients of color.”

The study used the Flatiron database to identify patients who received immunotherapy for NSCLC in recent years and evaluated outcomes related to adverse events and survival.

“We found that patients of color tended to have fewer adverse events documented, but interestingly, they had better survival than White patients,” Ho said. “This could be due to a variety of factors such as patient reporting, it could be due to measures of quality of care, whether or not these clinicians are documenting whether or not these patients have had adverse events.”

These differences could stem from differences in chart documentation or be related to other factors, he explained, noting that this could be an area for future research.

“Real-world evidence is messy, unfortunately. It’s not like a clinical trial where you’re required to document all of these adverse events,” Ho said, explaining that it would be informative to have access to data on the chart note quality and “see if adverse events are just not there versus confirmed to not be there.”