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What is objective tumor response?
Author(s) -
Rimm Alfred A.,
Ahlstrom John K.,
Bross Irwin D. J.
Publication year - 1967
Publication title -
cancer
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.052
H-Index - 304
eISSN - 1097-0142
pISSN - 0008-543X
DOI - 10.1002/1097-0142(196708)20:8<1326::aid-cncr2820200817>3.0.co;2-f
Subject(s) - medicine , drug response , complete response , objectivity (philosophy) , clinical trial , medical physics , oncology , drug , pharmacology , chemotherapy , philosophy , epistemology
Abstract When the decrease in tumor size is used to evaluate the therapeutic effectiveness of a promising anticancer agent in a short‐term clinical trial, it is considered to reflect “objective” response to therapy. This paper discusses the two senses of the word “objective” in the clinical testing situation: (1) objectivity in measuring tumor and (2) objectivity in the evaluation process which utilizes the measurements for classification into response or no response categories. The tumor size data from 1312 patients who received one of five drugs in the Eastern Clinical Drug Program were used for this analysis. The process of evaluating change in tumor size was studied with procedures or criteria for classifying tumor response. The application of various response criteria caused the proportion of responding patients to vary between 0.00 and 0.50; however, regardless of the particular set of response criteria applied to the data, the difference between drugs apparently was maintained.