Clinical efficacy evaluation of tyrosine kinase inhibitors for non-adenocarcinoma lung cancer patients harboring EGFR-sensitizing mutations

Epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) as a standard therapy have been used in EGFR-mutated adenocarcinoma of non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients in recent years. But in current randomized prospective clinical trials, due to few cases of non-adenocarcinoma patients having been found, the efficacy of TKIs for EGFR-mutated non-adenocarcinoma and the relationship with clinicopathological characteristics remained debatable. The results of retrospective studies showed that the frequency of EGFR mutation was significantly associated with nationality, gender, smoking history, and histology type. Being female, never-smoker and adenocarcinoma had a higher mutation rate. Furthermore, the EGFR mutation rate and efficacies of TKIs in adenocarcinoma were higher than those in non-adenocarcinoma. And in non-adenocarcinoma, the EGFR mutation rate and efficacies of TKIs in adenosquamous cell carcinoma were higher than those in squamous cell carcinoma or in large-cell lung carcinoma. In conclusion, it may be necessary to conduct a large sample prospective study to understand the clinicopathological characteristics of non-adenocarcinomas and to evaluate the efficacy of EGFR TKI and/or chemotherapy for EGFR-mutated non-adenocarcinoma NSCLC. So we searched relevant articles between the year 2010 and 2016 through the major indexed literature database PubMed by searching the keywords such as EGFR mutation, Tyrosine kinase inhibitors, and Non-adenocarcinoma.