Scientific jargon

[Ethyl Methyl]

What does "time to treatment failure" mean? I'm trying to read a journal for my presentation in class and I don't know what it means.

 

[WVUPharm2007]

What does "time to treatment failure" mean? I'm trying to read a journal for my presentation in class and I don't know what it means.

Probably exactly what it sounds like. The time it took for a certain study endpoint to be reach in a patient population that was determined to be indicative of "failure" by the study's author. It's hard to say exactly what that is without more information about the study...

 

[Ethyl Methyl]

Thanks for the quick response. I re-read the article again and realized that the authors actually defined what they meant by it -- time it took from randomisation to time randomized treatment was stopped because of ineadequate seizure control, intolerable side effect or both.

So, if the study concluded that drug X was significantly better than drug Y in terms of time to treatment failure would it mean that drug X worked better than drug Y and therefore had a longer time to treatment failure?

 

[WVUPharm2007]

Thanks for the quick response. I re-read the article again and realized that the authors actually defined what they meant by it -- time it took from randomisation to time randomized treatment was stopped because of ineadequate seizure control, intolerable side effect or both.

So, if the study concluded that drug X was significantly better than drug Y in terms of time to treatment failure would it mean that drug X worked better than drug Y and therefore had a longer time to treatment failure?

Yeah...basically, drug x kept the patient from slipping into treatment failure longer than the other drug did.

 

[PharmDstudent]

Perhaps you can think of AIDS drugs in the same light, i.e. the time it takes for the virus to become resistant to the treatment, causing the treatment to fail.

Good luck on your presentation! Research topics can be tough.

 

[Ethyl Methyl]

Thank you both for the help. 🙂