ESTRO 2023

Session Item

Health economics / health services research

Session Code: 5530

Session Type: Poster (Digital)

Track: Interdisciplinary

Impact of nationality on the quality of early side effects following radiotherapy in Germany

Muemtaz Koeksal, Germany

Presentation Number: PO-1088

Abstract

Abstract Title:

Impact of nationality on the quality of early side effects following radiotherapy in Germany

Authors:

Muemtaz Koeksal¹, Romy Streppel¹, Christopher Schmeel², Alexander Mustea³, Stefan Hauser⁴, Manuel Ritter⁴, Alina Abramian⁵, Andree Faridi⁶, Maria Gonzalez-Carmona⁷, Peter Brossart⁷, Niklas Schäfer⁸, Ulrich Herrlinger⁸, Mohammed Banat⁹, Erdem Güresir⁹, Hartmut Vatter⁹, Ulrike Höller¹⁰, Frank Giordano¹¹

¹University Medical Center, Radiation oncology, Bonn, Germany; ²University Medical Center, Radiatoin Oncology, Bonn, Germany; ³University Medical Center, Gynaecology and Gynaecological Oncology, Bonn, Germany; ⁴University Medical Center, Urology, Bonn, Germany; ⁵University Medical Center, Senology and Breast Center, Bonn, Germany; ⁶University Medical Center, Senology and Breast Cancer, Bonn, Germany; ⁷University Medical Center, Internal Medicine, Bonn, Germany; ⁸University Medical Center, Neuro-Oncology, Bonn, Germany; ⁹University Medical Center, Neurosurgery, Bonn, Germany; ¹⁰German Society for Radiation Oncology , DEGRO, Berlin, Germany; ¹¹University Medical Center, Radiation oncology , Bonn, Germany

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Purpose or Objective

The concept of personalized medicine (PM) aims at unique and tailored prevention, diagnosis, and treatment for individual groups of people. To accomplish this, factors predicting and diagnosing certain unfavorable side effects must be revealed and adopt into clinical medicine. Literature suggests an association between health and various sociodemographic parameters, such as nationality. To our knowledge, no investigation has examined the association between nationality and early side effects (SEs) of radiotherapy in Germany.

Material and Methods

Initially, 9,187 patients treated at our university between 2017 and 2021 were considered for investigation. A matched-pair analysis was conducted by matching 178 German patients to 178 non-German (hereinafter described as “foreign”) patients based on diagnostic and demographic criteria. For all 356 patients, well-documented data on SE from follow-up care after radiotherapy were collected.

Results

Our finding showed a difference in the quality, but not the quantity, of SE such that foreign patients display more severe early SEs compared to German patients. Furthermore, tumor entity, concurrent therapy, and body mass index were associated with SE severity.

Conclusion

In summary, our finding showed that foreign patients receiving radiotherapy were at high risk for more severe early SE, suggesting a great need to develop and implement targeted preventive measures for foreigners with cancer. Given the ongoing progress of PM, further research investigating predictive factors for SE is needed for better customization and individualization of interventions.