Decade of insights: Bleomycin-induced pneumonitis and use of G-CSF in chemotherapy-treated germ cell testicular tumors and Hodgkin lymphoma—Real-world outcomes from an academic cancer center.

e17013 Background: Bleomycin induced pulmonary toxicity (BIP) occurs in 4-10% of treated patients. Preclinical reports suggest G-CSF use may increase BIP risk, due to neutrophil migration to lung tissues. Limited real-world clinical data is available and G-CSF use may reduce risk of treatment related toxicity with curative bleomycin combination treatment. Methods: We conducted a retrospective study of patients with GCT (Germ cell tumor) and HL (Hodgkin’s lymphoma) receiving bleomycin containing chemotherapy and at-least on dose of G-CSF at The James Cancer Center from 2010-2022 using the institutional database. BIP was diagnosed mainly using clinical symptoms complemented by radiological evidence when possible. We reviewed 361 patients, 145 in GCT group and 216 in HL group and clinically relevant information was recorded.Descriptive statistics for the study variables were presented using frequencies and percentages overall. The bivariate associations between G-CSF use and clinical outcomes were assessed using chi-square tests or fisher’s exact tests for the overall sample, and by chemotherapy type. We used SPSS 26.0 for all the statistical analyses, and an alpha level of 0.05 (two-sided) was used for all the tests. Results: Data on 361 patients, including 145 GCT and 216 HL patients treated with at least one dose of bleomycin was available. The median age was 36.3 years in the GCT group and 44.2 years in the HL group.144 patients in the GCT and 50 patients in the HL group received at least 1 dose of G-CSF. BIP occurred in 4.8% in the GCT and 7.4% of patients in the HL group. Only 2 out of 16 patients developing BIP in the HL group received G-CSF. All patients with BIP developed symptomatic disease. On bivariate analysis, no association was noted between BIP and G-CSF in either group (p-value =1.00 in GCT and p-value = 0.32 in HL). Febrile neutropenia (FN) was reported in 4 patients in the GCT group and 29 in the HL group. In the HL subgroup, 28 (28/29) patients developing FN did not receive G-CSF (p-value=0.0008). All patients who developed FN required hospital admission. Conclusions: Use of G-CSF in patients receiving bleomycin was not associated with an increased incidence of BIP. Incidence of FN was higher in patients not receiving G-CSF leading to hospital admissions. Table: see text