Quantitative Studies Next Step to Understand Clinical Meaningfulness in Metastatic Breast Cancer Care

Stephanie Graff, M.D., FACP, FASCO, director of breast oncology at the Lifespan Cancer Institute and author of Investigating the Salience of Clinical Meaningfulness and Clinically Meaningful Outcomes in Metastatic Breast Cancer Care Delivery, explained that this study was just phase one of several to come.

For the next phase of research, her and her team plan to shift towards quantitative studies to examine how often, when and what tools are needed to facilitate conversations about clinical meaningfulness between patients and caregivers.

“I think that gathering all the qualitative work is going to help us build the set of data that informs the more quantitative work for a much broader group of data,” Graff said.

Graff said that patient care will continue to be at the center of the next phases of research.

“This is about a patient being able to effectively go to their doctor and say, ‘this is what's important to me,’ or the physician having the right language toolkit to say, ‘this is going to extend your life with median improvement in overall survival of 3.2 months which is an improvement in progression-free survival of 34%.' How do we turn medical statistics into clinically meaningful dialog with patients?”