Guideline adherence and the strategy of chemotherapy dose reduction in metastatic colorectal cancer: A multicenter oncology practice experience.

Abstract

24 Background: Current American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) guidelines recommend prophylactic use of colony stimulating factors (CSF) for prevention of febrile neutropenia among cancer patients. ASCO also recommends chemotherapy dose reduction as a viable alternative to CSF administration, which may result in cost savings to patients and payers, but adherence to these guidelines has been less than ideal. The objectives of this study were i.) to determine the prevalence and prescribing patterns of CSF and dose reduction in metastatic colorectal cancer patients and ii.) to evaluate the impact of a program initiative on CSF prescribing patterns and on compliance to ASCO guidelines. Methods: In this retrospective study, we utilized data from the electronic health records of metastatic colorectal cancer patients who received care at a multi-center oncology practice network during two time periods: July 2013 to December 2014 and July to December 2017. In 2016, a site-wide program initiative that involved educational materials, appropriate non-use recommendations and prior authorization was introduced in the oncology practice network with an aim of reducing CSF overutilization. Descriptive statistics and chi squared tests were employed to explore CSF utilization across patient age, gender, disease, year of diagnosis, febrile neutropenia risk, line of therapy and duration of treatment. Results: There were 3426 chemotherapy regimens corresponding to 2968 patients. There was a total of 3095 CSF administrations and the CSF administered was pegfilgrastim. There were 343 (10%) CSF users. Among subjects who had data on dose reduction (N = 508), 58.7% received dose reduction. CSF use was significantly lower in the post-period, compared to the pre-period (p < 0.0001). Compliance to guidelines was significantly higher in the post-period, compared to the pre-period (p < 0.0001). Conclusions: Our results demonstrate that program initiatives have the potential to positively impact CSF prescription patterns. These findings could help prescribers adopt a cost-effective approach for this population, leading to enhanced clinical practice and value-based care.