Safety and efficacy of pegylated recombinant human granulocyte colony-stimulating factor during concurrent chemoradiotherapy for small-cell lung cancer: a retrospective, cohort-controlled trial

OBJECTIVE: To investigate pegylated recombinant human granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (PEG-rhG-CSF) safety and efficacy in preventing hematological toxicity during concurrent chemoradiotherapy (CCRT) for small-cell lung cancer (SCLC). METHODS: We retrospectively assessed 80 SCLC patients treated with CCRT from January 2013 to December 2018 who received PEG-rhG-CSF within 48 hours after the end of chemotherapy, defined as prophylactic use, as the experimental group. An additional 80 patients who were not treated with PEG-rhG-CSF were matched 1:1 by the propensity score matching method and served as the control group. The main observations were differences in hematological toxicity, neutrophil changes, febrile neutropenia (FN) incidence and adverse reactions. Progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) were analyzed with regular assessment and follow-up. RESULTS: The leukocyte, neutrophil, erythrocyte, and platelet counts and hemoglobin level decreased after CCRT, but the experimental group had slightly higher leukocyte and neutrophil counts than the control group (P < 0.05). The incidences of grade III-IV leukopenia (18.75% vs. 61.25%) and neutropenia (23.75% vs. 67.5%) in the experimental group were significantly lower than those in the control group (P < 0.05). The absolute neutrophil count was 4.17 ± 0.79 (× 10(9)/L) on day 1 and peaked 6.81 ± 2.37 (× 10(9)/L) on day 10 in the experimental group; the value in the control group was 2.81 ± 0.86 (× 10(9)/L) on day 1. It decreased significantly and reached the minimum 0.91 ± 0.53 (× 10(9)/L) on day 10 (P < 0.05). The experimental group had a lower FN incidence than the control group (P < 0.05). There was also no significant acute esophagitis or pulmonary toxicity. The treatment had no significant effect on PFS (11.4 months vs. 8.7 months, P = 0.958) or OS (23.9 months vs. 17.3 months, P = 0.325) over an 18.6-month median follow-up time. CONCLUSION: PEG-rhG-CSF has good efficacy and safety in preventing hematological toxicity in SCLC patients during CCRT and has no significant effects on PFS or OS. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12885-022-09644-8.