Ronald Chen, Professor and Chair of the Department of Radiation Oncology at the University of Kansas Medical Center, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“Cancer clinical trials should include assessments on quality of life.
This is something most patients want to know, but some clinical trials don’t include this as a key data point. Most are focused on how to improve treatments, comparing the cure and survival rates of new, experimental treatments against standard ones. These are vital to advancing cancer care.
But by adding quality of life as an outcome of our studies, we can also get a better understanding of a new treatment’s side effects and how they’ll impact a patient over time.
Patients want to know:
- How much ‘benefit’ will the new treatment give me (in terms of cancer control and survival)?
- And how much will the new treatment harm me (in terms of side effects and quality of life)?
Knowing both will help patients make the best treatment decision for them. Which means it’s important to think about this when you’re designing your clinical trial.
I have helped design quality of life assessments for many clinical trials and am passionate about this work.
I was honored to share these perspectives and learnings at the Society of Urologic Oncology, Inc’s Annual Scientific Meeting this week. Let’s continue to design our clinical trials to assess outcomes that patients care about: cancer control, survival and quality of life.”
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