• Soraya L Voigt, Vignesh Raman, Oliver K Jawitz, Muath Bishawi, Chi-Fu Jeffrey Yang, Betty C Tong, Thomas A D'Amico, and David H Harpole.
• Affiliations of authors: Division of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery, Department of Surgery, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC, USA.
• J. Natl. Cancer Inst. 2020 Nov 1; 112 (11): 1118-1127.

BackgroundThere is no standard of care with respect to the use of neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) in resectable malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM). We performed an intention-to-treat analysis with data from a single institution and the National Cancer Database (NCDB) to identify whether the use of NAC impacts survival in resectable MPM.MethodsPatients with MPM who had surgery with curative intent at Duke University from 1995 to 2017 were selected, and the 2004-2015 NCDB was used to identify MPM patients with clinical stage I-IIIB who underwent definitive surgery. For both cohorts, patients were stratified by receipt of NAC. Primary outcomes were overall survival and postresection survival (RS), which were estimated using Kaplan-Meier and multivariable Cox proportional hazards models.ResultsA total of 257 patients met inclusion criteria in the Duke cohort. Compared with immediate resection (IR), NAC was associated with similar overall survival but an increased risk for postresection mortality in both unmatched (adjusted hazard ratio [HR] = 1.85, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.21 to 2.83) and propensity-matched (HR = 1.62, 95% CI = 1.03 to 2.55) cohorts. A total of 1949 NCDB patients were included: 1597 (81.9%) IR and 352 (18.1%) NAC. RS was worse for patients undergoing NAC in both unmatched (HR = 1.85, 95% CI = 1.21 to 2.83) and propensity-matched (HR = 1.29, 95% CI = 1.06 to 1.57) analyses compared with patients receiving IR.ConclusionsIn this intention-to-treat study, NAC was associated with worse RS compared with IR in patients with MPM. The risks and benefits of induction therapy should be weighed before offering it to patients with resectable MPM.© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

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