Opioids Have No Negative Effect on the Survival Time of Patients with Advanced Lung Cancer in an Acute Care Hospital

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to determine whether or not opioid administration influenced the survival time of patients with advanced lung cancer in an acute care hospital setting.

Methods: This was a single institutional and retrospective study. We reviewed patients with advanced lung cancer who had died from January 2008 to December 2013 at the Osaka Police Hospital. We compared survival times, calculated from the time of the last hospitalization or the last chemotherapy, between patients who had not used any opioids, those who had used a low dose of opioids (< 60 mg/day), and those who had used a higher dose of opioids (≥ 60 mg/day).

Results: A total of 369 patients, of which 284 had received chemotherapy, were analyzed. Opioid users were generally younger than nonusers. There was no significant difference in survival time after the last hospitalization in terms of opioid dose at the last admission and mean daily opioid dose; there was also no significant difference in survival time after the last chemotherapy in terms of the mean daily opioid dose and the opioid dose at death. Univariate and multivariate Cox proportional hazard analysis regarding survival time after the last hospitalization or the last chemotherapy did not reveal any opioid-related variables as a significant predictive factor.

Conclusions: Opioids were found to have no negative influence on survival time even in an acute care hospital.