Posted by CLDing on February 15, 1998 at 10:18:26:
In Reply to: Re: Mestatic Ca Prostate posted by hinwai on February 15, 1998 at 01:49:26:
I just want to add a word on performance score. Performance score (I used the Karnofsky
score to do a paper on CaP while in Edinburgh) - believe me, is worse than pain score.
Pain scoring is patient felt and judged (already bad enough). Performance score is doctor
judging the patient's feelings, performance of routine task with no consideration of the
mood of the patient!! Anyway, performance score was popularised in the early eightees. It
has been used by our non-urological colleagues as well. For practically every tumour
situation which I know have been studied with performance score - the conclusion is the
same - good performance score at entry of study, better survival. To me it is armchair
information. That is why I find the NCI and EORTC papers weird in their conclusion. The
scientific basis for MAB is very tenuous. It assumes that there is a nice distribution of
androgen-dependency among the tumour cells (something which has not been proven).