Proventys stars University chancellor in birth of a salesman

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Data collection is a challenge

It's fine to get lab reports on chemo patients
before and after a chemo treatment. Not that
difficult and you end up with a mass of
numbers.

The problem is being able to define the patient
sufficiently to properly assign them into the
correct group.

My wife is a pretty good example. She's in
remission from acute leukemia and had lots of
lab reports to generate data.

But how do you classify her? By primary type of
leukemia? Acute in her case. Then there is the
breakdown of ALL and AML. So we have 4 basic
groups: ALL, AML, CLL, CML. Now add sex to
the classification - men tend to get AML and
they generally have poorer outcomes.

For women, you need to know if they had
radiation in the past - especially from breast
cancer. This is where we feel my wife's
leukemia comes from. If there was previous
treatment from breast cancer then throw in the
level of treatment, and the various types of
breast cancers.

Now you need to take the date from the bone
marrow tests as these provide different
classification groups for your study.

Then, of course, there is the chemo regimen
that will be used - and how well the patient
keeps to the schedule. My wife was a bit off the
consolidation schedule as her blood would go
down and she'd delay the next round while she
got blood and platelets.

Actually you need to break down by treatment
stage. My wife started with an month in
hospital for "induction", which got her into
remission. Then there was "consolidation", 8
rounds - rotating two "recipes". A full rotation
was about 6 to 8 weeks depending on how well
she did.

Then there was a series of 5 chemo treatments
via the spinal core. Spinal puncture, drain some
fluid (for more lab results) and push in the poison. Like others, my wife didn't get the last
spinal treatment because her blood took a nose
dive.

Finally there is 30 months of oral chemo. My
wife went about 3 weeks and was taken off of it
because of the impact on the liver.

And let's not forget age. My wife was in her
60s and her ALL is predominately seen in kids.
It's the type of leukemia that kids get most of
the time.

All of these factors presents a huge challenge
for Proventys. There is simply a mountain of
variables that need to be considered.

Oh, there is one more somewhat important
variable - changes in regimens and new
regimens that replace the ones where data has
been collected.

I wish Proventys well, but believe they face a
huge challenge when working in the area of
cancer. The information they can develop will
probably be helpful, but I wouldn't want
treatment of a fast growing cancer to be
determined solely by that information -
especially when there are clinical trials of new
cancer fighting drugs (and radiation) that is an
ongoing process.

Posted by: Ken_z   Posted on: 01/30/09 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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