Non-small cell lung cancer with synchronous brain metastases: Identification of prognostic factors in a retrospective multicenter study (HOT 1701)

Non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is a very aggressive type of lung cancer that often spreads to the brain. The authors of this study wanted to better understand which factors determine how long a patient lives once NSLC metastasizes to the brain. To do this, the authors reviewed the medical records of 566 patients in Japan with metastases in their brains from NSCLC. Their results showed that, on average, patients lived for 11.8 months. They identified 6 factors that affected how long they lived. These factors included age, overall health status, the severity of the original lung cancer, genetic differences in the cancer, whether the cancer had spread to other parts of the body, and the total number of different metastases in the brain. Based on these factors, the authors identified 3 groups of patients, with those in the high-risk group having much shorter survival compared to those in the low-risk group.