Real-world use and adverse events with ICIs in Belgium

During ESMO 2024, Dr Annelies Verbiest, medical oncologist at the University Hospital Antwerp, presented the results of a real-world analysis looking into the treatment patterns of immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) in three Belgian hospitals.

The analysis included a total of 1,574 patients across 20 different cancer types who together received 18,584 ICI-administrations. Interestingly, 44% of the study cohort was made up of lung cancer patients. An analysis of the time of onset of adverse events revealed that 54% of these adverse events actually occurred before the start of the ICI therapy As such, these were comorbidities rather than ICI-induced adverse events. The latter was particularly the case for arthritis (71% pre ICI) and diabetes mellitus (84% pre ICI). 

This was only the first analysis using the data from this granular data warehouse. However, this warehouse will definitely serve as solid datapool to address additional real-world research questions in the years to come.