Re-administration of chemotherapy in patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer who recovered from chemotherapy-induced interstitial lung disease

Abstract

We reported that epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) tyrosine kinase inhibitor re-administration (TKI-R) might be salvage therapy in patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer after recovery from EGFR-TKI-induced interstitial lung disease (ILD). Here we retrospectively evaluated whether chemotherapy re-administration (CT-R) was effective in patients after chemotherapy-induced ILD. After providing their informed consent due to the risk of severe ILD, five patients received CT-R and six received TKI-R with oral administration of 0.5 mg/kg prednisolone. The overall survival (OS) from the occurrence of drug-induced ILD was shorter in CT-R cases than that in TKI-R cases (7.3 months vs. 25.4 months, p=0.003). The median duration of OS, however, was 7.3 months in cases with CT-R and 1.9 months in cases without CT-R. Multivariate analysis showed that CT-R as well as TKI-R tended to reduce the risk of mortality. CT-R might be salvage therapy in such patients, although the benefit of CT-R was smaller than that of TKI-R.