[Experience with the use of gefitinib in patients with inoperable non-squamous cell lung cancer with activating EGFR mutations]

Discovery of activating EGFR mutations led to dramatic modification of treatment schemes for nonsquamous lung cancer. 70 patients with activating EGFR mutations were treated by gefitinib being either a part of prospective phase II trial (n = 25) or, subsequently, subjected to routine clinical management (n = 45). Objective response rate approached to 32.7%. Median time to disease progression was 14 months, and median overall survival was 26.1 months. Subgroup analysis revealed statistically longer time to disease progression (p0,0001) and overall survival (p = 0,001) in latter vs. former group, despite the lower rate of objective response (22% vs 48%). Possible explanations include more relaxed standards for routine gefitinib use, i.e. inclusion of the patients with non-measurable tumor lumps, continuation of gefitinib uptake upon slow disease progression, and increasing availability and quality of radiosurgery for brain metastases.