A novel indicator QD reveals the response evaluation regularity of liver cancer patients in the COVID-19 era

ABSTRACT

Aims: The COVID-19 epidemic has disrupted the daily life of all people, especially cancer patients. In clinical practice, the evaluation cycle of patients is not regular, which impacts subsequent treatment and tumor monitoring to some extent. The objective of this study was to compare the characteristics and survival outcomes of patients with liver lesions based on the regularity of response evaluation (RE). Method(s) Data on patients with tumor lesions in the liver between January 1, 2015, and December 31, 2021, were extract from the Clinical Research Intelligence System of Shanghai General Hospital. The quartile deviation (QD) of patient evaluation intervals was introduced as an indicator to determine the regularity of their voluntary RE. The characteristics, progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) of patients from the start of treatment were evaluated and compared. Result(s) A total of 587 records from 102 patients were screened and analyzed, and two-thirds of the patients (60.784%) had more than 7 REs during the treatment period. The average QD value of all patients was 6.77, which was used to divide patients into a regular RE group and an irregular RE group. The regular group were younger (61.6 +/-1.218) and had shorter RE intervals (10.57 +/-0.4566) and better OS (mOS = 39 months). Conclusion(s) The QD of patient evaluation intervals is a reasonable indicator of RE regularity, and the regular administration of response evaluations in cancer patients is an important factor affecting survival outcomes.