Cancer
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Attrition is common among supportive care/palliative oncology clinical trials. However, to the authors' knowledge, few studies to date have documented the reasons and predictors for dropout. In the current study, the authors' objective was to determine the rate, reasons, and factors associated with attrition both before reaching the primary endpoint and at the end of the study. ⋯ The attrition rate was high in supportive care/palliative oncology clinical trials, and was associated with various patient characteristics and a high baseline symptom burden. These findings have implications for future clinical trial design including eligibility criteria and sample size calculation.
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Little is known about the impact of direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) on appropriate versus inappropriate prescribing. Aromatase inhibitor (AI) therapy for breast cancer provides an ideal paradigm for studying this issue, because AIs have been the focus of substantial DTCA, and because they should only be used in postmenopausal women, age can serve as a simple surrogate marker of appropriateness. ⋯ DTCA for the AIs was associated with increases in appropriate prescriptions with no significant effect on inappropriate prescriptions, suggesting that DTCA may not foster inappropriate medication use for certain drug classes.