Outcomes research
Different domains of cancer need definition of distinct outcomes parameters as no outcome will be relevant to all. Two main domains, cancer therapeutics and prevention, should be classified into short- and long- term assessment:
Different domains of cancer need definition of distinct outcome parameters. No outcome will be relevant to all. The main domains are cancer therapeutics and prevention.
1) Cancer therapeutics
a) Short-term
- Assess clinical effectiveness of innovations—in combination with health economics analyses as a ‘gate keeper’ before implementation into the healthcare system.
- Monitor the percentage of patients in clinical trials and compare outcomes for patients in and outside clinical trials.
- Study short-term overall survival to mitigate effects of lead-time bias and possible overdiagnosis.
b) Long-term
- Study 5- and 10-year overall patient survival to mitigate effects of lead-time bias and possible overdiagnosis.
- Study 5- and 10-year cancer overall mortality and cancer-specific mortality (rate of death of cancers in the population, stratified by age and gender, and other relevant risk factors).
- Assess all-cause mortality (although new treatments may not reduce all-cause mortality, all-cause mortality should be used as an endpoint to ensure that harms of the new treatment do not affect other causes of death).
- Determine health-related quality of life after 5, 10 years and longer.
2) Prevention
a) Short-term
- Assess population receptivity to prevention interventions.
- Assess the potential impact of intervention programmes on the prevalence of behavioural risk factors for cancer, such as smoking, alcohol consumption, obesity (of the whole population) as a function of intervention programmes.
- Monitor the percentages of patients and individuals included in behavioural research and in prevention trials or other studies aiming at reducing the cancer burden.
b) Long-term
- Assess trends in cancer incidence, cancer mortality and overall mortality.
- Study effects of cancer prevention strategies on mortality in the population.
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