Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors and a Recent Study on Head and Neck Cancer Patients

The Dana Farber Cancer Institute recently published an article titled, Some Head and Neck Cancer Patients Benefit From Continued Checkpoint Inhibitor Treatment after Tumor Growth.

You can read the full article here.

Response Evaluation Criteria In Solid Tumors (RECIST) is a set of published rules that define when tumors in cancer patients improve (“respond”), stay the same (“stabilize”), or worsen (“progress”) during treatment. The criteria were published in February 2000 by an international collaboration including the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC), National Cancer Institute of the United States, and the National Cancer Institute of Canada Clinical Trials Group.

Today, the majority of clinical trials evaluating cancer treatments for objective response in solid tumors use RECIST. These criteria were developed and published in February 2000, and subsequently updated in 2009. This article clearly shows that these criteria cannot be used to determine the efficacy of immunotherapy. It is not uncommon for scans, as well as the clinical picture, to worsen, with immunotherapy, before we see improvement.

Bottom line: Do not decide whether the patient should stop immunotherapy, based on the CT scan or PET scan. If the patient is doing reasonably well clinically, and is able to continue immunotherapy, continuation of therapy should be considered.

~ Dr. Rosenberg

 

healthyliving August 29th, 2017

Posted In: Cancer Prevention

Tags: cancer, cancer prevention, Response Evaluation Criteria