The Strategy of Cancer Treatment

Abstract

The strategy of cancer treatment involves a variety of perspectives. One perspective involves research versus care. Clinical research involves studies designed to involve the therapeutic index of available therapies or to find new therapy with superior efficacy or diminished treatment-related morbidity. Clinical care attempts to bring to every patient the optimal benefits of existing knowledge derived from the past experiences of clinical research. The goals of care and their evaluation involve a discipline labeled “cancer control,” and cancer control research involves studies designed to demonstrate that optimal patterns of care are in fact being administered to defined populations. Cancer care, cancer control, and clinical research are not necessarily in conflict as strategies since it is generally agreed that clinical research delivers best cancer care. Increasingly, cancer clinical research is striving to involve community oncologists so as to increase their ability to study critical questions within a context of optimal care delivery.