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Defining clinically important overall survival thresholds: lessons from quality of life

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In randomized controlled trials in oncology, changes in quality of life are usually reported together with a description of the differences considered a priori to be clinically important, but overall survival outcomes are rarely provided together with information of what constitutes a clinically meaningful threshold. In this Comment, we propose the benefits that could be derived from reporting overall survival in a similar way to quality of life.

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Acknowledgements

B.G. receives salary support from Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, funded by the government of Ontario. C.M.B. is supported by the Canada Research Chairs programme. The authors would like to thank M. Brundage (Queen’s Cancer Research Institute) for providing valuable comments and feedback on an earlier version of this manuscript.

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Correspondence to Bishal Gyawali.

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B.G. has acted as a consultant for Vivio Health. C.M.B. declares no competing interests.

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Gyawali, B., Booth, C.M. Defining clinically important overall survival thresholds: lessons from quality of life. Nat Rev Clin Oncol 19, 613–614 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41571-022-00667-5

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