There are an increasing number of drugs in the same space that prolong survival. In many instances, despite men having castrate resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) their ECOG performance status is 0; or they are highly functional and active despite having cancer.
The effect a drug might have on this type of man’s QoL could have more significance to their well-being than cancer itself. Some of these treatments have side effect profiles that might set a man back even more significantly than the cancer progression. If a therapy is going to slow down what a man can do daily, that outcome might not be in the man’s best interest.
It is essential that we emphasize QoL issues into the evaluation of our treatments. Evaluating QoL is happening, but it should become the standard in clinical trials.
