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The Median Isn't the Message
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Fifteen years ago, when my mom had non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, we'd go
in to see her onc. We'd ask what the odds were, how
likely she was to respond to the therapy, the usual
stuff.
What the onc said to us was essentially this: - If you put 100 patients in front of me, I can tell you
ABOUT how many of them will live, and how many will
not. I can tell you ABOUT how many will respond to a
particular therapy. If you put 1000 patients in front
of me, I can do even better.
But YOU will either respond to the therapy, or not. YOU will live, or die. And I don't know which it will be. It's not like flipping a coin. I can't average it out.
The statistics help me think about what the best treatment options might be, but they don't tell me the answer to the question -- will it work for you? The statistics tell me about how many patients will live in the US with your disease, they tell me NOTHING about you. -
The take-home message was there isn't a
20% chance of a therapy working for my mom (or now,
for me) just because 20% of the Phase III population
responded. That therapy would either work, or it
wouldn't. And we wouldn't know until it did or it
didn't.
- Karolen
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