Predictive Value of Total Metabolic Tumor Burden Prior to Treatment in NSCLC Patients Treated with Immune Checkpoint Inhibition.

Morphological and metabolic properties of the primary tumors prior to treatment in advanced NSCLC patients treated with ICI showed great outcome prediction performances, as opposed to the pre-treatment total metabolic tumor burdens, captured by MTV and TLG, both with negligible impact on OS, PFS and CB. However, the outcome prediction performance of the total metabolic tumor burden might be influenced by the value itself (e.g., poorer prediction performance at very high or very low values of total metabolic tumor burden). Further studies including subgroup analysis with regards to different values of total metabolic tumor burden and their respective outcome prediction performances might be needed.