Kinjal Shankar Majumdar, Medical Consultant at Narayana Health, shared a post on X:
“Honoured to be on a panel discussing on a very important recent trial on ‘Perioperative immunotherapy in stage III/IVA head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (Keynote 689)’ at the recently completed ‘Best of ASCO 2025’ organised by Global Healthcare Academy in Bengaluru, India.
While the trial has the potential to change the treatment guideline in near future, we should not forget about a few important issues:
- 6 extra months (9 vs 3) of therapy for 10% absolute event free survival (EFS) benefit with 9% more serious AEs and 6% more discontinuation of treatment due to added toxicity (including financial).
- Median overall survival (OS) is still not reached for both arms.
- Exploratory analysis showed benefit in Stage III and not IVA (?heterogenous study population – ?selection bias). The EFS was majorly contributed by distant metastases free survival (DMFS) and less second primaries, but not locoregional control (LRC) where most of HNSCC fails – Over-treatment for questionable clinical benefit?
- Trial setting and real world scenario are two different things. IO accessibility is 3% in eligible patients in India as per published Indian data from TMH Mumbai.
Ever grateful to the organisers and ASCO for the opportunity. It was wonderful to share the stage with Dr. Sapna Nangia and Dr. Kaustubh Patel. Thanks to Narayana Health for the support.”
More posts featuring Kinjal Shankar Majumdar on OncoDaily.
