ArticleEcancermedicalscience2018
Cancer treatment in the last 6 months of life: when inaction can outperform action.
Article in Ecancermedicalscience, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed, 9 citations in OpenAlex.
- The quality of reporting general safety parameters and immune-related adverse events in clinical trials of FDA-approved immune checkpoint inhibitors.BMC cancer · 2020Trial
- Decision Making in Older Adults With Cancer.Journal of clinical oncology : official journal of the American Society of Clinical Oncology · 2021Review
- Defining Undertreatment and Overtreatment in Older Adults With Cancer: A Scoping Literature Review.Journal of clinical oncology : official journal of the American Society of Clinical Oncology · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
When an investigational anticancer drug is being tested, demonstration of improvement in overall survival (OS) will generally lead to regulatory approval. However, the value that improvement in OS adds to patients' lives is guided largely by the context of the improvement and accompanying trade-offs. For example, when a patient's life expectancy is less than 6 months, many oncologists will not embark on any active cancer treatments. However, multiple new anticancer drugs have been approved recently after being tested in end-stage cancer patients and demonstrating median OS in the experimental arm close to 6 months. Such practice, particularly when the treatment is also accompanied by serious toxicities and cost, can undermine a peaceful life-death transition. In this commentary, we review regulatory approvals in the last 5 years and the ethical considerations involved in testing active cancer treatment in terminal cancer patients.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.