This is exciting: ASCO is funding a registry on how cancer patients are managed during the Covid-19 pandemic, seeking to capture 12-month outcomes on patients included in the all-comers cohort (the study is agnostic on tumor types, whether the patient is cancer-free or metastatic, and treatment modality). The full list of objectives and outcomes is available here, but they’re capturing everything from baseline status to treatment modifications to symptom severity to cancer and virus outcomes in Covid-confirmed patients. The meaty CRF is here. I love it.
Of course, everyone is using a registry for everything now, and there’s a potential competitor in place from the “Covid-19 and Cancer Consortium”. While ASCO put most of their protocol information online, the Consortium’s page highlights their participating institutions, and … it’s a good mix of sites, representing both Big Cancer and smaller community networks (I’m really curious to see a breakout of patient management by center size and geography in the analyses). On their website, ASCO differentiates their registry by noting that it’s more holistically focused on patient outcomes rather than Covid-specific treatment outcomes, so it would be great if centers could participate in both … but no one wants to fill out CRFs twice, even when they’re not strained by a pandemic. It would be a shame to miss out on the data ASCO is looking to capture. This is not the time for RCTs, and I’m happy to see that Covid-19 patients are being treated the way I think (advanced) cancer patients should be treated all the time: dole out chloroquine, remdesivir, losartan, cell therapies, whatever you’ve got. We know there’s no data. We don’t know what works. So let’s watch and learn.
B4 U Consent 