Assessment of anticancer drug utilization pattern and patients’ survival—A single center experience from Saudi Arabia

Study design: A retrospective observational study conducted between June 2014 and April 2022 at King Khaled Hospital (KKH) in Najran City, Saudi Arabia included all adult patients with cancer regardless of the stage or treatment type. The study included by default all adult patients, defined as >18 years old, with an established pathological diagnosis of cancer who were managed in our cancer center. The pathological confirmation requires tissue sampling that’s obtained based on the tumor nature and site, typically through minimally invasive procedures (e.g., fine-needle aspiration, core biopsy) or excisional tissue (i.e., postoperative). We excluded patients with no pathological confirmation, in addition to patients who were non-recipients of chemotherapy, diagnosed but referred or managed out of the cancer center, had incomplete records, lost during follow-up, or those without consent to participate were excluded. Study variables: The variables included in this research included patient demographics (age and gender), diagnosis year, concurrent comorbidities, cancer location and stage (metastatic and non-metastatic), treatment intent, delay before initiating chemotherapy, chemotherapy regimens, and agents, antiemetic use, drug side-effects manifestation, patient final status (survivors and non-survivors) and the last follow-up duration. Utilizing logistic regression analysis, we investigated the variables impacting survival rates. The study’s dependent variables were delineated by WHO prescribing, patient care, and health facility indicators,12 with socio-demographic traits (age and gender) acting as predictor variables. Metrics such as the average number of drugs per encounter and the percentages of drugs named generically, encounters involving drug prescription, as well as prescribed drugs from the essential drugs list were computed to provide a granular insight into prescribing trends. Study outcome: This study primarily evaluated the prescribing trends of anticancer drugs.