Bevacizumab of No Benefit to Older Patients with Lung Cancer

Adding bevacizumab to paclitaxel and carboplatin did not improve overall survival in patients aged ≥65 with advanced, nonsquamous non–small-cell lung cancer.

Bevacizumab, an antibody against vascular endothelial growth factor, inhibits tumor angiogenesis. A prior randomized study showed that patients with advanced, nonsquamous non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who received bevacizumab (B), paclitaxel (P), and carboplatin (C) achieved longer median overall survival (OS) than those who received PC alone (JW Gastroenterol Jan 12 2007). However, subgroup analyses of patients from that study demonstrated that BPC provided no significant OS benefit for patients older than 70 (J Clin Oncol 2008; 26:60).

To further study the effect of adding B to PC in older patients with advanced nonsquamous NSCLC, investigators assessed Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) and Medicare–linked data for 41…

Reviewing Author

Ramaswamy Govindan, MD