Quantifying absolute treatment effect heterogeneity for time-to-event outcomes across different risk strata: divergence of conclusions with risk difference and restricted mean survival difference.

Background: Risk-based analyses are increasingly popular for understanding heterogeneous treatment effects (HTE) in clinical trials. For time-to-event analyses, the assumption that high-risk patients benefit most on the clinically important absolute scale when hazard ratios (HRs) are constant across risk strata might not hold. Absolute treatment effects can be measured as either the risk difference (RD) at a given time point or the difference in restricted mean survival time (ΔRMST) which aligns more closely with utilitarian medical decision-making frameworks.

Causes of death among patients diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia: A population-based study in the Netherlands, 1996-2020.

Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) manifests heterogeneously with varying outcomes. This population-based study examined causes of death (CODs), as registered by the physician who established the death, among 20,588 CLL patients diagnosed in the Netherlands between 1996 and 2020. Utilizing cause-specific flexible parametric survival models, we estimated cause-specific hazard ratios (HRs) and cumulative incidences of death due to CLL, solid malignancies, other hematological malignancies, infections, and other causes.

Comparative effectiveness of 6x R-CHOP21 versus 6x R-CHOP21 + 2 R for patients with advanced-stage diffuse large B-cell lymphoma.

First-line treatment for advanced-stage diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) typically involves 6x R-CHOP21 or 6x R-CHOP21 with two additional rituximab administrations (6x R-CHOP21 + 2 R). In contemporary practice, this treatment choice might be guided by interim PET scan results. This nationwide, population-based study investigates the comparative effectiveness of these treatment regimens in an era where interim PET-guided treatment decisions were not standard practice.

Externally Controlled Studies Using Real-World Data in Patients With Hematological Cancers: A Systematic Review.

Importance: The use of real-world data (RWD) external control arms in prospective studies is increasing. The advantages, including the immediate availability of a control population, must be balanced with the requirements of meeting evidentiary standards.

Objective: To address the question of whether and to what extent the methods of RWD studies compare to standard methods used in randomized clinical trials.