An investigation into survival length in malignant pleural effusion over time

<bold>Introduction & Background:</bold> Over recent years there have been a number of new therapeutics to treat the underlying causative primary malignancies of malignant pleural effusions (MPE). However, whether these have improved survival time following the development of MPE is unknown. <bold>Aims & objectives:</bold> This study aimed to assess whether the survival length of patients diagnosed with MPE at Oxford University Hospitals (OUH) has changed between 2015-2023. <bold>Methods:</bold> A cohort of patients with MPE diagnosed between 2015-2023 was generated from the OUH pleural MDT database. Patients were split into groups of equal size based on MPE diagnosis date, and their survival time was assessed using Kaplan-Meier analysis. This was carried out for all causes of MPE, and specifically for lung cancer, mesothelioma and breast cancer patients. <bold>Results:</bold> 740 patients with MPE were identified. There were no significant differences between survival curves in either the all-cause analysis, or in the cancer-specific analyses. For the all-cause analysis, patients were split into three groups: Group 1 had MPE diagnosed between 07/2015-09/2018, Group 2 between 10/2018-03/2021, and Group 3 between 03/2021-10/2023. The median length of survival in Group 1 was 158 days, in Group 2 was 140 days and in Group 3 was 149 days. <bold>Conclusions:</bold> Our results indicate that despite the introduction of various new therapeutics for cancer types which cause MPE, there has not been a significant improvement in the length of survival from MPE diagnosis in our cohort.