Re:Breast-cancer death rate drops almost 40 percent
by jszymborski on Tuesday October 03, 2017 @04:07PM
(#15395683)
It's my opinion that OS5 is a largely misleading stat that makes us underestimate the role early stages of cancer like ADH/ALH have in recurrence.
That being said, there are a number of reasons that I believe it's so prevalent.
(1) 5 year long survival studies are long and risky affairs, increasing that number just makes it longer and riskier
(2) particularly when speaking about differences in treatment, a statistically significant average increase of 1 month survival over standard of care is sufficient to supplant it, so OS5 v. OS10 doesn't change much if your treating advanced cancers that result in deaths before 5 years.
When it comes to most cancers though, I think OS5 is a very bad stat.
That being said, there are a number of reasons that I believe it's so prevalent.
(1) 5 year long survival studies are long and risky affairs, increasing that number just makes it longer and riskier
(2) particularly when speaking about differences in treatment, a statistically significant average increase of 1 month survival over standard of care is sufficient to supplant it, so OS5 v. OS10 doesn't change much if your treating advanced cancers that result in deaths before 5 years.
When it comes to most cancers though, I think OS5 is a very bad stat.