Continuation maintenance therapy with pemetrexed in patients with non-small-cell lung cancer in the Czech Republic
Abstract
Lung carcinoma is among the leading cancers by incidence and mortality both worldwide and in the Czech Republic. In the recent years, there has been considerable progress in NSCLC treatment.
Already at the time of diagnosis, efforts are made to establish the morphological diagnosis as precisely as possible and, when indicated, to perform genetic testing. This particularly applies to non-squamous NSCLC.
In 2013, the efficacy and safety data of continuation maintenance monotherapy with pemetrexed were reported and, owing to the positive outcome, this treatment has been available in the Czech Republic since May 2013. Our paper presents a group of 134 evaluated patients who received the above-mentioned treatment.
In real clinical practice in the Czech Republic, continuation maintenance therapy with pemetrexed achieved better results than the registration study, and the treatment was tolerated very well. So far, the median overall survival (OS) has been determined to be 23.5 months.