Inclusion criteria.

Digging deeper into why some oncologists may hold prejudice against clinical trials in lieu of their own recs, let’s look again at the ECOG-ACRIN 2511 trial. As a reminder, it assessed the efficacy of the PARP inhibitor veliparib in extensive-stage small cell lung cancer. It’s come under recent scrutiny due to the observation that enrollees weren’t offered life-prolonging consolidative chest radiation nor prophylactic cranial irradiation (nor even the alternative of short-interval surveillance brain MRIs). Some suggest radiation was held as to not muddy safety signals of the investigational drug, an important concern to note as advancements in systemic therapies rapidly outpace concurrent studies thoroughly evaluating their safety in combo with radiation. TBL: Randomized trials are a crucial step to clinical advancements, and the very least enrollees and enrolling physicians deserve is criteria in include no less than the standard of care across all oncologic disciplines. | Owonikoko, J Clin Oncol 2019