Figure 3. Differential outcome of ALK⁺, EGFR⁺ and chemotherapy-treated wildtype NSCLC.

Retrospective analysis of tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI)-treated ALK⁺ (n = 74 with >1 TKI, n = 109 with just 1 TKI) and EGFR⁺ (n = 344) NSCLC patients, along with a random sample of n = 40 EGFR/ALK-wildtype NSCLC patients that received chemotherapy in the Thoraxklinik at Heidelberg University Hospital [22]. Basic clinical and treatment characteristics of ALK⁺ and EGFR⁺ patients are shown in Table 2. Median overall survival was 65 months for ALK⁺ patients that received >1 TKI, 40 months for ALK⁺ patients that received just 1 TKI, 25 months for TKI-treated EGFR⁺ patients and 10 months for wildtype patients; p < 0.001 across groups and p = 0.043 for the comparison between the EGFR⁺ and ALK/1-TKI subgroups with a log-rank test; WT: wildtype; CHT: chemotherapy.