Clinical assessment of patients with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer eligible for second-line chemotherapy

Purpose: Knowledge of prognostic factors for advanced non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients eligible for second-line treatment is scarce. The aim of this study was to assess the prognostic role of a number of routinely collected clinical variables and to provide a summary index to discriminate patients according to probability of survival.Methods: individual data from nine randomised trials of second-line treatment in advanced NSCLC were analysed. Primary end-point was overall survival (OS). Cox model, stratified by trial, was used for multivariate analyses, and a prognostic index was provided and validated according to an internal/external procedure.Results: Out of 1239 patients, 119…