Respect the Role of the Patient: Most Common Issue in RCC Abstracts

Nazli Dizman, MD, hematology/oncology fellow at MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses her research on adherence to the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Language of Respect Guidelines among patients with renal cell carcinoma (RCC).¹

These guidelines were developed prior to the 2020 ASCO Annual Meeting to promote the use of respectful language towards patients in abstracts and presentations. Research by Dizman and colleagues presented at the 2024 ASCO Genitourinary Annual Meeting looked at the adherence to these guidelines in regard to RCC abstracts which were presented at the 2023 ASCO Annual Meeting.

Of the 184 abstracts evaluated, 42.4%, 18.5%, and 2.2% included at least 1 statement which violated the “do not dehumanize the patient”, “do not blame”, and “respect the role of the patient” clauses, respectively.

Transcription:

0:09 | We evaluated all the RCC abstracts based on the 3 main clauses of the language of respect guidelines. The most commonly violated clause was the respect for the role of the patient. These are the statements that use a patient's disease as an adjective, like metastatic patients or cancer patients, statements like that.

0:40 | The second most commonly violated clause was the do not blame patient clause. This falls into, patient achieved, patient failed treatment, or grouping patients based on their response to therapy, for example, responders, non responders.

1:00 | And the third common clause was the do not dehumanize patient clause that we assessed and in that, I think around 2 thirds of the abstracts had at least 1 statement against this. This clause would include examples like PD-L1-positive patients or metastatic patients.

REFERENCE:

Dizman N, Castro DV, Mercier BD, et al. From guidelines to accountability: Examining adherence to ASCO Language of Respect in renal cell carcinoma (RCC) abstracts. J Clin Oncol. 2024;42(suppl 4):396. doi:10.1200/JCO.2024.42.4_suppl.396