Does Beta-blocker Therapy Improve the Survival of Patients with Metastatic Non-small Cell Lung Cancer?

Aim: To determine whether beta-blockers (BBs) improve the overall survival (OS) of patients with metastaticnon-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Materials and
Methods: The medical charts of 107 patients with metastaticNSCLC were retrospectively assessed. Thirty-five patients (BB group) using BBs during chemotherapy (CT)were compared with 72 controls [control=(C) group] who did not use BBs following the diagnosis of NSCLC.The histological tumor subtype, performance status (ECOG), age, gender, smoking status, comorbidities, othermedications and chemotherapeutics that were received in any line of treatment were recorded. We comparedthe overall survival (OS) of the patients in the BB and C groups.
Results: The mean age of the patients was 61years (range 42-81 years) and all patients were administered CT. The BB group was more likely to have HTand IHD and was more likely to use RAS blockers (p<0.01 for all) compared with the C group, as expected. Themean follow-up time was 17.8 months (range 1-102 months) for the entire group. The most commonly prescribedBB agent was metoprolol (80% of cases). At the time of the analysis, 74 (69%) of all patients had died. In theunivariate analysis the median overall survival (OS) was 19.25 (±2.87) months (95%CI: 13.62-24.88) in the BBgroup and 13.20 (±2.37) months (95%CI: 8.55-17.85) in the C group (p=0.017). However, the benefit of BBs onsurvival disappeared in the multivariate analysis.
Conclusions: The use of BBs during CT may be associatedwith an improved OS for patients with metastatic NSCLC.