Anas Younes, MD, chief of the Lymphoma Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses current research for staging patients with follicular lymphoma. In order to design new clinical trials, researchers must have reliable predictors of overall survival and progression-free survival in patients.
Anas Younes, MD, chief of the Lymphoma Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses current research for staging patients with follicular lymphoma. In order to design new clinical trials, researchers must have reliable predictors of overall survival and progression-free survival (PFS) in patients.
One ongoing trial is studying the use of PET scans to stage patients with follicular lymphoma. This trial will determine whether or not the PFS-24 (PFS at 24 months) or EFS-24 (event-free survival at 24 months) can be used as a surrogate endpoint for survival.
Younes says that the results so far demonstrate that the results of staging by PET scans are not as reliable as staging with CT scans, which have been used in the past. The results from this study will make an impact on the design of future clinical trials.