Elizabeth Handorf

Survival Impact of Increasing Time to Treatment Initiation for Patients With Head and Neck Cancer in the United States

PURPOSE To estimate the overall survival (OS) impact from increasing time to treatment initiation (TTI) for patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC). METHODS Using the National Cancer Data Base (NCDB), we examined patients who received curative therapy for the following sites: oral tongue, oropharynx, larynx, and hypopharynx. TTI was the number of days from diagnosis to initiation of curative treatment. The effect of TTI on OS was determined by using Cox regression models (MVA). Recursive partitioning analysis (RPA) identified TTI thresholds via conditional inference trees to estimate the greatest differences in OS on the basis of randomly selected training and validation sets, and repeated this 1,000 times to ensure robustness of TTI thresholds. RESULTS A total of 51,655 patients were included. On MVA, TTI of 61 to 90 days versus less than 30 days (hazard ratio [HR], 1.13; 95% CI, 1.08 to 1.19) independently increased mortality risk. TTI of 67 days appeared as the optimal threshold on the training RPA, statistical significance was confirmed in the validation set (P < .001), and the 67-day TTI was the optimal threshold in 54% of repeated simulations. Overall, 96% of simulations validated two optimal TTI thresholds, with ranges of 46 to 52 days and 62 to 67 days. The median OS for TTI of 46 to 52 days or fewer versus 53 to 67 days versus greater than 67 days was 71.9 months (95% CI, 70.3 to 73.5 months) versus 61 months (95% CI, 57 to 66.1 months) versus 46.6 months (95% CI, 42.8 to 50.7 months), respectively (P < .001). In the most recent year with available data (2011), 25% of patients had TTI of greater than 46 days. CONCLUSION TTI independently affects survival. One in four patients experienced treatment delay. TTI of greater than 46 to 52 days introduced an increased risk of death that was most consistently detrimental beyond 60 days. Prolonged TTI is currently affecting survival.

The rise and fall of prostate brachytherapy: use of brachytherapy for the treatment of localized prostate cancer in the National Cancer Data Base.

Brachytherapy has been shown to be an efficacious and cost‐effective treatment among patients with localized prostate cancer. In this study, the authors examined trends in brachytherapy use for localized prostate cancer using a large national cancer registry.

Effectiveness of Androgen-Deprivation Therapy and Radiotherapy for Older Men With Locally Advanced Prostate Cancer

PURPOSE We examined whether the survival advantage of androgen-deprivation therapy with radiotherapy (ADT plus RT) relative to ADT alone for men with locally advanced prostate cancer reported in two randomized trials holds in real-world clinical practice and extended the evidence to patients poorly represented in the trials. METHODS We conducted nonrandomized effectiveness studies of ADT plus RT versus ADT in three groups of patients diagnosed between 1995 and 2007 and observed through 2009 in the SEER-Medicare data set: (1) the randomized clinical trial (RCT) cohort, which included men age 65 to 75 years and was most consistent with participants in the randomized trials; (2) the elderly cohort, which included men age > 75 years with locally advanced prostate cancer; and (3) the screen-detected cohort, which included men age ≥ 65 years with screen-detected high-risk prostate cancer. We evaluated cause-specific and all-cause mortality using propensity score, instrumental variable (IV), and sensitivity analyses. RESULTS In the RCT cohort, ADT plus RT was associated with reduced cause-specific and all-cause mortality relative to ADT alone (cause-specific propensity score-adjusted hazard ratio [HR], 0.43; 95% CI, 0.37 to 0.49; all-cause propensity score-adjusted HR, 0.63; 95% CI, 0.59 to 0.67). Effectiveness estimates for the RCT cohort were not significantly different from those from randomized trials (P > .1). In the elderly and screen-detected cohorts, ADT plus RT was also associated with reduced cause-specific and all-cause mortality. IV analyses produced estimates similar to those from propensity score-adjusted methods. CONCLUSION Older men with locally advanced or screen-detected high-risk prostate cancer who receive ADT alone risk decrements in cause-specific and overall survival.

Genetic Risk Factors for Hepatopulmonary Syndrome in Patients With Advanced Liver Disease

BACKGROUND & AIMS Hepatopulmonary syndrome (HPS) affects 10%-30% of patients with cirrhosis and portal hypertension and significantly increases mortality. Studies in experimental models indicate that pulmonary angiogenesis contributes to the development of HPS, but pathogenesis in humans is poorly understood. We investigated genetic risk factors for HPS in patients with advanced liver disease. METHODS We performed a multicenter case-control study of patients with cirrhosis being evaluated for liver transplantation. Cases had an alveolar-arterial oxygen gradient > or = 15 mm Hg (or > or =20 mm Hg if age > 64 years) and contrast echocardiography with late appearance of microbubbles after venous injection of agitated saline (intrapulmonary vasodilatation); controls did not meet both criteria for case status. The study sample included 59 cases and 126 controls. We genotyped 1086 common single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in 94 candidate genes. RESULTS Forty-two SNPs in 21 genes were significantly associated with HPS after adjustments for race and smoking. Eight genes had at least 2 SNPs associated with disease: CAV3, ENG, NOX4, ESR2, VWF, RUNX1, COL18A1, and TIE1. For example, rs237872 in CAV3 showed an odds ratio of 2.75 (95% confidence interval: 1.65-4.60, P = .0001) and rs4837192 in ENG showed an odds ratio of 0.35 (95% confidence interval: 0.14-0.89, P = .027). Furthermore, variation in CAV3 and RUNX1 was associated with HPS in gene-based analyses. CONCLUSIONS Polymorphisms in genes involved in the regulation of angiogenesis are associated with the risk of HPS. Further investigation of these biologic pathways might elucidate the mechanisms that mediate the development of HPS in certain patients with severe liver disease.

Increasing time to treatment initiation for head and neck cancer: An analysis of the National Cancer Database

The objective of this study was to identify trends and predictors of the time to treatment initiation (TTI) for patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC).

Cost Effectiveness of Personalized Therapy for First-Line Treatment of Stage IV and Recurrent Incurable Adenocarcinoma of the Lung

PURPOSE Patients with epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutation-positive stage IV adenocarcinoma have improved survival with tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) treatments, but the cost effectiveness of personalized first-line therapy using EGFR mutation testing is unknown. METHODS We created a decision analytic model comparing the costs and effects of platinum combination chemotherapy with personalized therapy in which patients with EGFR mutation-positive tumors were treated with erlotinib. We used two testing strategies: testing only those with tissue available and performing a repeat biopsy if tissue was not available versus three nontargeted chemotherapy regimens (ie, carboplatin and paclitaxel; carboplatin and pemetrexed; and carboplatin, pemetrexed, and bevacizumab). RESULTS Compared with a carboplatin plus paclitaxel regimen, targeted therapy based on testing available tissue yielded an incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) of

Radical Cystectomy versus Bladder-Preserving Therapy for Muscle-Invasive Urothelial Carcinoma: Examining Confounding and Misclassification Biasin Cancer Observational Comparative Effectiveness Research

110,644 per quality-adjusted life year (QALY), and the rebiopsy strategy yielded an ICER of

Temporal Trends and Factors Associated with Systemic Therapy after Cytoreductive Nephrectomy: An Analysis of the National Cancer Database

122,219 per QALY. Probabilistic sensitivity analysis revealed substantial uncertainty around these point estimates. With a willingness to pay of

Endogenous Sterol Metabolites Regulate Growth of EGFR/KRAS-Dependent Tumors via LXR

100,000 per QALY, the testing strategy was cost effective 58% of the time, and the rebiopsy strategy was cost effective 54% of the time. Personalized therapy with an EGFR TKI was more favorable when the nontargeted chemotherapy regimen was more expensive. Compared with carboplatin, pemetrexed, and bevacizumab, ICERs were

Hypoalbuminaemia is associated with mortality in patients undergoing cytoreductive nephrectomy

25,547 per QALY for the testing strategy and