THE "NEW" PROSTATE CANCER INFOLINK

The Advanced Prostate Cancer Working Group of the International Consortium for Health Outcomes Measurement has finally been able to pull together a set of standardized patient-centered outcomes relevant to the evaluation of men in treatment for advanced forms of prostate cancer.

The lack of such a standardized set of outcomes has been problematic in the conduct of large international clinical trials and in attempting to compare data from trials carried out in different countries around the world. While all such standardized sets of outcomes involve compromises, and it is unlikely that every expert will be satisfied with the proposed outcome set, The “New” Prostate Cancer InfoLink sees the initial development of this set of standardized outcomes as a strong step in the right direction.

Unfortunately, at present, we have not seen the full paper that details the proposed outcomes set. All that we know is what is available in the abstract of the paper by Morgans et al. recently published in European Urology. We will be trying to obtain a copy of the full text of this paper at the earliest convenient date.

According to the paper’s abstract:

Recognizing the heterogeneity of men with advanced prostate cancer, the group defined the scope as men with all stages of incurable prostate cancer (metastatic and biochemical recurrence ineligible for further curative therapy). We defined outcomes important to all men, such as overall survival, and measures specific to subgroups, such as time to metastasis. Measures gathered from clinical data include measures of disease control. We also identified patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs), such as degree of urinary, bowel, and erectile dysfunction, mood symptoms, and pain control.

Please “watch this space” to see further details when we can obtain them.

Filed under: Diagnosis, Living with Prostate Cancer, Management, Treatment | Tagged: advanced, outcome, standardized, Treatment |