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Editorial
(Un)common sense in oncology
  1. Adrian M J Pokorny12
  1. 1 Alice Springs Hospital, Alice Springs, Northern Territory, Australia
  2. 2 Chris O'Brien Lifehouse, Camperdown, New South Wales, Australia
  1. Correspondence to Dr Adrian M J Pokorny; adrian.pokorny{at}health.nsw.gov.au

https://doi.org/10.1136/dtb.2024.000043

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    Advanced cancer is generally incurable, with all medicines aimed at life prolongation and palliation. In this setting, patients are at their most vulnerable, seeking treatment while facing an existential threat. Such circumstance may risk poor decision-making, on the part of both patients and their treating clinicians.

    It must be acknowledged that cancer treatments have made great strides in recent years, with some therapies such as immune checkpoint inhibitors occasionally leading to sustained control of advanced disease. Even so, many drugs used in later lines of treatment, when cancers have progressed despite multiple standard therapies, may reach exorbitant prices while offering little or no improvement in survival.1 Worse still, they may add toxicities that diminish a patient’s quality of life while approaching death.2 As a field, oncology seems to …

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    Footnotes

    • Competing interests None declared. Refer to the online supplementary files to view the ICMJE form(s).

    • Provenance and peer review Commissioned; externally peer reviewed.