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Bryant AK, Lewy JR, Bressler RD, Chopra Z, Gyori DJ, Bazzell BG, Moeller JA, Jacobson SI, Fendrick AM, Kerr EA, Ramnath N, Green MD, Hofer TP, Vaishnav P, Strohbehn GW. Projected environmental and public health benefits of extended-interval dosing: an analysis of pembrolizumab use in a US national health system. The Lancet. Oncology. 2024 Jun 1; 25(6):802-810.
Dimensions for VA is a web-based tool available to VA staff that enables detailed searches of published research and research projects. BACKGROUND: Health care is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, leading to climate change and public health harms. Changes are needed to improve the environmental sustainability of health-care practices, but such changes should not sacrifice patient outcomes or financial sustainability. Alternative dosing strategies that reduce the frequency with which specialty drugs are administered, without sacrificing patient outcomes, are an attractive possibility for improving environmental sustainability. We sought to inform environmentally sustainable cancer care by estimating and comparing the environmental and financial effects of alternative, clinically equivalent strategies for pembrolizumab administration. METHODS: We conducted a retrospective analysis using a cohort of patients from the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) in the USA who received one or more pembrolizumab doses between May 1, 2020, and Sept 30, 2022. Using baseline, real-world administration of pembrolizumab, we generated simulated pembrolizumab use data under three near-equivalent counterfactual pembrolizumab administration strategies defined by combinations of weight-based dosing, pharmacy-level vial sharing and dose rounding, and extended-interval dosing (ie, every 6 weeks). For each counterfactual dosing strategy, we estimated greenhouse gas emissions related to pembrolizumab use across the VHA cohort using a deterministic environmental impact model that estimated greenhouse gas emissions due to patient travel, drug manufacture, and medical waste as the primary outcome measure. FINDINGS: We identified 7813 veterans who received at least one dose of pembrolizumab-containing therapy in the VHA during the study period. 59?140 pembrolizumab administrations occurred in the study period, of which 46?255 (78·2%) were dosed at 200 mg every 3 weeks, 12?885 (21·8%) at 400 mg every 6 weeks, and 14?955 (25·3%) were coadministered with infusional chemotherapies. Adoption of weight-based, extended-interval pembrolizumab dosing (4 mg/kg every 6 weeks) and pharmacy-level stewardship strategies (ie, dose rounding and vial sharing) for all pembrolizumab infusions would have resulted in 24·7% fewer administration events than baseline dosing (44?533 events vs 59?140 events) and an estimated 200 metric tons less CO emitted per year as a result of pembrolizumab use within the VHA (650 tons vs 850 tons of CO, a relative reduction of 24%), largely due to reductions in distance travelled by patients to receive treatment. Similar results were observed when weight-based and extended-interval dosing were applied only to pembrolizumab monotherapy and pembrolizumab in combination with oral therapies. INTERPRETATION: Alternative pembrolizumab administration strategies might have environmental advantages over the current dosing and compounding paradigms. Specialty medication dosing can be optimised for health-care spending and environmental sustainability without sacrificing clinical outcomes. FUNDING: None.
