Why is duration of response important in evaluating non-Hodgkins lymphoma treatments?
During the natural course of indolent non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, patients will average five to six treatments during their lifetime. Because patients with indolent non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma will ultimately relapse, the goal for a physician is to keep patients off therapy and free of relapse for as long as possible. Therefore, the most important endpoint in treating indolent non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma is duration of response, as compared to response rate. Duration of response is a measure of the actual time that a patient responds to therapy and will be free of subsequent treatment, while the response rate is a single point-in-time measurement of a patient’s CT scan to show how much tumor shrinkage occurred. To further illustrate this point, one patient can have a clear CT scan, a complete response, but have a duration of that response for six months, while another patient could have only a partial response to a therapy (i.e. cancer is visible on a CT scan) but that response could last a full yea
