Impact of tumour size measurement inter-operator variability on model-based
drug effect evaluation.
Cancer Chemother Pharmacol 2020;
85:817-825. [PMID:
32170415 PMCID:
PMC7125250 DOI:
10.1007/s00280-020-04049-5]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/10/2019] [Accepted: 02/27/2020] [Indexed: 12/20/2022]
Abstract
Purpose
During oncology clinical trials, tumour size (TS) measurements are commonly used to monitor disease progression and to assess drug efficacy. We explored inter-operator variability within a subset of a phase III clinical trial conducted from August 1995 to February 1997 and its impact on drug effect evaluation using a tumour growth inhibition model.
Methods
One hundred twenty lesions were measured twice at each time point; once at the hospital and once at the centralised centre. A visual analysis was performed to identify trends within the profiles over time. Linear regression and relative error ratios were used to explore the inter-operator variability of raw TS measurements and model-based estimates.
Results
While correlation between patient-level estimates of drug effect was poor (r2 = 0.28), variability between the study-level estimates was much less affected (9%).
Conclusions
The global evaluation of drug effect using modelling approaches might not be affected by inter-operator variability. However, the exploration of covariates for drug effect and the characterisation of an exposure–tumour shrinkage relationship seems limited by the high measurement variability that translates to a poor correlation of individual drug effect estimates. This might be addressed by the use of more precise computer-aided measurement methods.
Electronic supplementary material
The online version of this article (10.1007/s00280-020-04049-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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