Treatment of Elderly Patients With Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer: Results of an International Expert Panel Meeting of the Italian Association of Thoracic Oncology

Most patients with non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) are elderly, and age has important implications for their management and treatment. In May 2014, the Italian Association of Thoracic Oncology organized an International Experts Panel Meeting with the intent to review the available evidence regarding the treatment of elderly patients with NSCLC and to discuss the implications for clinical practice and future research in this field; this article summarizes the panelists' conclusions. All patients aged more than 70 years should receive an assessment of physiologic age, including mortality and toxicity prediction. Age itself does not contraindicate adjuvant chemotherapy after resection. Elderly patients with locally advanced NSCLC should be considered for combined chemo-radiotherapy. In the advanced setting, the combination of carboplatin/paclitaxel results in prolonged survival compared with single-agent gemcitabine or vinorelbine, albeit with increased toxicity. In fit selected patients, other carboplatin-based or cisplatin-based regimens are feasible, but randomized trials specifically showing survival prolongation in elderly patients are lacking. The survival benefit for bevacizumab added to chemotherapy seems limited to patients aged less than 75 years. In unfit elderly patients, single agents are recommended. Regardless of age, patients with advanced nonsquamous NSCLC, and those who have never smoked independently of their histologic subtype, should be tested for epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutation and anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) rearrangement. In patients with NSCLC harboring EGFR mutation or ALK rearrangement, targeted drugs are feasible and well tolerated.