A computer program designed to assist in NSCLC adjuvant therapy decision making
7230 Background: The goal the computer program, Adjuvant! for NSCLC, is provide the health professional, and the NSCLC patient with information that might be helpful when deciding about adjuvant chemotherapy for completely resected Stage 1 to Stage 3A disease. The 4 elements of this decision are: estimates of prognosis, estimates of the efficacy of adjuvant chemotherapy, estimates of completing mortality, and estimates of toxicity. Methods: Estimates of prognosis are based on an analysis of 17, 130 patients in the SEER registry. Estimates for 5 year disease specific mortality for Stage 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B, and 3A disease are 22%, 37%, 51%, 63%, and 70%. Multivariate analysis justifies using tumor size, histologic grade, and BAC histology for refinement of prognostic estimates for Stage 1 patients. A small subgroup of Stage 1 patients (with tumors < 10mm, low grade, BAC histology) could be identified with a 5 year disease specific mortality risk of <10%. Estimates of the efficacy of chemotherapy were derived from meta-analyses. A proportional risk reduction of 20% is used by the program as the default efficacy estimate for platinum-based therapy. Pop-ups and help files discuss areas of uncertainty and controversy. The user has the option to adjust the default efficacy estimate to the more optimistic efficacy estimates of some of the recent trials, or to take into account some of the uncertainty as to whether adjuvant chemotherapy works as well in Stage 1 disease. SEER data shows the average NSCLC patient has competing mortality rates higher than would be suggested by chronologic age. Regimen specific risks of treatment related toxicity is given by the program. In the over 100 pages of help files there is a detailed discussion of the clinical evidence, adjuvant therapy guidelines, ongoing clinical trials, and corollary areas (radiotherapy, neoadjuvant therapy, biomarkers, etc.) Results: The program projects that for patients with favorable Stage 1 tumors the absolute OS benefit of therapy may be as low as 1% (of the same size as the risk of treatment related mortality), but for patients with Stage 2 and 3A disease the 5 yr OS benefit may be ∼10%. Conclusions: The impact of this tool on physician and patient knowledge about the adjuvant therapy of NSCLC will be presented. [Table: see text]