Subgroup Discovery Analysis of Treatment Patterns in Lung Cancer Patients

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death. More than 236,740 new cases of lung cancer patients are expected in 2022, with an estimation of more than 130,180 deaths. Improving the survival rates or the patient's quality of life is partially covered by a common element: treatments. Cancer treatments are well known for the toxic outcomes and secondary effects on the patients. These toxicities cause different health problems that impact the patient's quality of life. Reducing toxicities without a decline on the positive survival effect is an important goal that aims to be pursued from the clinical perspective. On the other hand, clinical guidelines include general knowl-edge about cancer treatment recommendations to assist clinicians. Although they provide treatment recommendations based on cancer disease aspects and individual patient features, a statistical analysis taking into account treatment outcomes is not provided here. Therefore, the comparison between clinical guidelines with treatment patterns found in clinical data, would allow to validate the patterns found, as well as discovering alternative treatment patterns. In this work, we have analyzed a dataset containing lung cancer patients information including patients' data, prescribed treatments and outcomes obtained. Using a Subgroup Discovery method we identify patterns based on cancer stage while relying on treatment outcomes. Results are compared with clinical guide-lines and analyzed based on statistical and medical relevance using Subgroup Discovery metrics.