Cancer science
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The efficacy of gefitinib for patients with non-adenocarcinoma non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) harboring epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutations is unclear, because only a small percentage of patients enrolled in the clinical trials to evaluate the efficacy of gefitinib for tumors harboring EGFR mutation were non-adenocarcinoma NSCLC. A pooled analysis was conducted to clarify the efficacy of gefitinib for non-adenocarcinoma NSCLC patients harboring EGFR mutations. A systematic search of the PUBMED databases was conducted to identify all clinical reports that contained advanced non-adenocarcinoma NSCLC patients harboring EGFR mutations and treated with gefitinib. ⋯ The response rate (RR), disease control rate (DCR) and median progression-free survival (mPFS) was 27%, 67-70% and 3.0 months, respectively. These factors were statistically significantly inferior in the non-adenocarcinoma NSCLC patients harboring EGFR mutations to adenocarcinoma patients harboring EGFR mutations selected from the same published reports (RR: 27%vs 66%, P = 0.000028; DCR: 67-70%vs 92-93%, P = 0.000014; mPFS: 3.0 vs 9.4 months, P = 0.0001, respectively). Gefitinib is less effective in non-adenocarcinoma NSCLC harboring EGFR mutations than adenocarcinoma harboring EGFR mutations.