NCT04108338

Prospective Comparisons of Clinical Trial and Real-world Outcomes in Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma

Prospective Comparisons of Survival Outcomes, Safety Profile, and Probability of Returning to Society Between Three Randomized Controlled Trials and Real-world Evidence in Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma.

• Status: Completed
• Phase: —
• Study type: Observational
• Enrollment: 5,448 (actual)
• Sponsor: Sun Yat-sen University · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 8 Years – 79 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

Study results from randomized controlled trials (RCTs) usually have been found not adequately inform practice. A RCT is optimized to determine efficacy, while real-world study is conducted in a routine care setting aimed to determine effectiveness. Thus, it is necessary to evaluate the pragmatism of clinical trials for a better understanding of the external generalizability. Nonetheless, comparative pragmatic features of RCTs and real-world studies still lack well elucidation. By capitalizing on a nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC)-specific big-data, real-world database and individual patient data extracted from three landmark RCTs, investigators conducted the direct comparison of NPC cohorts receiving same treatment strategy in clinical trial versus real-world settings, and examined the comparative pragmatic features and their influences on survival outcomes, safety profile, and the probability of returning to society.

Detailed description

Study results from randomized controlled trials (RCTs) usually have been found not adequately inform practice. A RCT is optimized to determine efficacy. Such trials were performed with relatively small samples at sites with experienced investigators and highly selected participants, they could be overestimating benefits and underestimating harm. Real-world study is conducted in a routine care setting aimed to determine effectiveness. Thus, it is necessary to evaluate the pragmatism of clinical trials for a better understanding of the external generalizability. Nonetheless, comparative pragmatic features of RCTs and real-world studies still lack well elucidation. Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is a malignant head and neck cancer with the highest incidences in endemic regions such as Southern China, where over 60,600 new cases were diagnosed in 2015 representing 40% of all cases worldwide. Studies conducted in China are critical in optimizing clinical decision-making of NPC. In the past two decades, the recommendation level of induction chemotherapy (IC) + concurrent chemoradiotherapy (CCRT) has been improved evidently from Category 3 to 2A, and CCRT alone has long been a stable (Category 2B) and classic treatment option of NPC and therefore becomes the most commonly used control group in comparative studies. By capitalizing on a NPC-specific big-data, real-world database via a cancer registry in Southern China and individual patient data extracted from the three landmark RCTs, investigators conducted the direct comparison on IC+CCRT cohort or CCRT cohort of clinical trial versus real-world settings, and examined the comparative pragmatic features and their influences on survival outcomes, safety profile, and the probability of returning to society, with the aim to provide new insight into the optimization of trial design and the translation of study evidences into tangible benefits.

Conditions

• Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	Trial setting	Study results from clinical trials usually have been found not work efficiently in clinical practice. This outcome disparity may be caused by different pragmatic features of medical environment, also known as study setting such as trial setting and real-world setting, in which biases inherent to clinical trial design restrict its applicability even though all confounding factors are avoided.

Timeline

• Start date: 2019-06-01
• Primary completion: 2019-07-01
• Completion: 2019-08-01
• First posted: 2019-09-30
• Last updated: 2019-10-01

Locations

1 site across 1 country: China