What Are the Challenges in Estimating Treatment Effects?
Estimating treatment effects in cancer is challenging due to several factors:
Heterogeneity: Cancer is not a single disease but a collection of related diseases, each with different biological behaviors and treatment responses. Survivorship Bias: Patients who live longer are more likely to be included in long-term follow-up studies, skewing the results. Confounding Variables: Factors such as age, gender, comorbidities, and previous treatments can affect outcomes and complicate the estimation of treatment effects. Sample Size: Small sample sizes can lead to less reliable estimates. Larger sample sizes generally provide more robust data but are harder to achieve.
