"In terms of the quality of life, what we have to conclude is that as our instruments can measure it we do not see a detriment in quality of life. But intuitively, we can conjecture that being on chemotherapy has some negative aspects – just ask any of our patients. So the idea that there is no detriment in quality of life when we’re comparing chemotherapy to nonchemotherapy suggests that we need more sensitive and specific tools for the question," he said.
The CAIRO3 study was supported by the Dutch Cancer Foundation and by unrestricted scientific grants from Roche and Sanofi-Aventis. Dr. Koopman disclosed ties with Roche/Genentech and Sanofi. Dr. Saltz disclosed ties with Roche, Genentech, and Sanofi.