Life expectancy lengthened in recent years for patients with cystic fibrosis

Key takeaways:

• The median age at death for those with cystic fibrosis was 66 years in 2022 vs. 26 years in 2008.
• Life expectancy of patients with cystic fibrosis was only 12% lower than that of healthy individuals in 2022.

Patients with cystic fibrosis had an average survival of 66 years in 2022, which is a notable increase from 26 years in 2008, according to study results from Epic Research.

Jacqueline Gerhart

“Advancements in treatments and therapies mean that cystic fibrosis can now be diagnosed and treated more effectively than it was in the past, so the results of the study weren’t surprising,” Jacqueline Gerhart, MD, chief medical officer at Epic Research and a family medicine physician, told Healio. “Nevertheless, it’s encouraging to see the impact these treatments are having in the lives of patients.”

Epic Research is a public benefit corporation that expedites data publication through internal peer review. According to its website, most of its studies use data from 1,187 hospitals and more than 25,400 clinics that use the Epic System’s electronic health record software (Cosmos dataset).

Additionally, all Epic Research studies are conducted by two teams, which are each made up of a clinician and a data scientist.

In this study, both teams evaluated patients who died with CF (n = 3,420) and patients who died without CF (n = 4,783,007) between 2008 and 2022 to see how average age at death differed in both populations.

Among those who died without CF, the median age at death was 75 years in both 2008 and 2022; however, for those who died with CF, the median age at death went up from 26 years in 2008 to 66 years in 2022.

Additionally, patients with CF had a 65% lower life expectancy compared with those without CF in 2008, which improved to only a 12% lower life expectancy based on numbers from 2022, representing an 82% reduction in the life expectancy gap.

When assessing decade of death among those with CF, researchers further observed improvement, with only around one in five patients dying before age 40 years in 2022 vs. almost 50% in 2016.

“Providers should help patients who are diagnosed consider a comprehensive care program and ensure that they are taking precautions against infections, including immunizations when appropriate,” Gerhart told Healio. “There are also new genetic advances for both diagnosis and treatment, so with earlier diagnosis, we can anticipate that the life expectancy for cystic fibrosis will continue to rise.”

Reference:

• About Us. Epic Research. https://epicresearch.org/about-us. Accessed Aug. 4, 2023.