No abstract

The majority of lung cancer patients progressing from conventional therapies are refractory to PD ‐L1/ PD ‐1 blockade monotherapy. Here, we show that baseline systemic CD 4 immunity is a differential factor for clinical responses. Patients with functional systemic CD 4 T cells included all objective responders and could be identified before the start of therapy by having a high proportion of memory CD 4 T cells. In these patients, CD 4 T cells possessed significant proliferative capacities, low co‐expression of PD ‐1/ LAG ‐3 and were responsive to PD ‐1 blockade ex vivo and in vivo . In contrast, patients with dysfunctional systemic CD 4 immunity did not respond even though they had lung cancer‐specific T cells. Although proficient in cytokine production, CD 4 T cells in these patients proliferated very poorly, strongly co‐upregulated PD ‐1/ LAG ‐3, and were largely refractory to PD ‐1 monoblockade. CD 8 immunity only recovered in patients with functional CD 4 immunity. T‐cell proliferative dysfunctionality could be reverted by PD ‐1/ LAG ‐3 co‐blockade. Patients with functional CD 4 immunity and PD ‐L1 tumor positivity exhibited response rates of 70%, highlighting the contribution of CD 4 immunity for efficacious PD ‐L1/ PD ‐1 blockade therapy.

Satisfaction with care among cancer patients treated at the day hospital is high. Nurses play a key and successful role. Age and tumour location revealed stronger relationships with SC. Correlations between SC and quality of life indicate that these concepts are complementary.

The OUT-PATSAT35 RT appears to be a reliable and valid instrument when applied to a sample of Spanish cancer patients. These results are in line with those of the validation study conducted by the authors of the questionnaire.

The OUT-PATSAT35 CT is a reliable and valid instrument when applied to a sample of Spanish cancer patients. These results are in line with those of the validation study conducted by the authors of the questionnaire and with the validation study for Spain of the OUT-PATSAT35 RT.

The EORTC IN-PATSAT32 appears to be a reliable and valid instrument when applied to a sample of Spanish cancer patients. These results are in line with those of the EORTC validation study.

The EORTC QLQ-INFO 25 is a reliable and valid instrument when applied to a sample of Spanish cancer patients. These results are in line with those of the EORTC validation study.

Incidence, predictors and prognostic significance of thromboembolic disease in patients with advanced ALKrearranged non-small cell lung cancer To the Editor: Thromboembolic disease is fairly common in patients with lung cancer [1-3]. This incidence seems to be higher in patients with lung adenocarcinomas [4], with approximately 15% of those with advanced stage disease developing venous thromboembolisms (VTE) during the whole course of their disease [5-7]. Pulmonary adenocarcinomas are a heterogeneous group of diseases that can be stratified according to the presence of major oncogenic driver alterations. Anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) rearrangements are detected in approximately 4% of these cases [8]. Isolated reports have suggested that patients bearing ALK-rearranged tumours might have a higher than expected incidence of thromboembolisms [9, 10]. In the present study, we have analysed the incidence, predictors and prognostic significance of thromboembolic events in a large, multi-institutional and homogeneous cohort of advanced stage patients with ALK-rearranged lung cancers from Spain and Portugal. Our primary objective was to estimate the incidence of thromboembolic events and their association with overall survival in these patients. A centralised institutional ethics committee approval at the 12 de Octubre University Hospital valid for all Spanish centres, and an institutional ethics committee approval at the Portuguese Institute of Oncology of Porto, were obtained before the study was initiated. We retrospectively selected all consecutive patients diagnosed with advanced stage (stages III and IV) ALK fusion positive non-small cell lung cancers (NSCLCs) between January 2012 and December 2016. Data were contributed by 29 Medical Centres from Spain and one from Portugal. ALK positivity was determined according to local standard protocols in each institution. We excluded patients with neuroendocrine tumours and patients on therapeutic doses of anticoagulants prior to advanced stage cancer diagnosis. We defined a thromboembolic event as any venous or arterial thromboembolism, documented by imaging studies, that occurred at the time or after advanced stage cancer diagnosis. In addition to thromboembolic events, collected during the whole patients' follow-up period, we collected baseline information (within 1 month of advanced stage cancer diagnosis) of several clinical and analytical variables of interest. We included 241 ALK-rearranged NSCLCs in this study. The median age was 56 years (range 17-84 years). Half of the patients were never smokers (52%), and most had stage IV pulmonary adenocarcinomas (n=204, 85%). Baseline brain and liver metastasis were detected in 22% and 25% of the patients, respectively. 17 patients (7%) and 185 patients (77%) had high and intermediate Khorana risk scores (KRS) [11] respectively. The median follow-up of our study population was 19 months (range 0-59 months), and 127 (53%) of the patients died. The median follow-up of alive patients was 30 months (range 4-49 months). The est...