Median time to response

[kykeon22]

hi everyone,

i was trying to read some papers about drug trials, and there is a term that I don't understand very well, or at least I'm not sure of.

Median time to response?

What does it mean?

As I understand it I think that it's the time for a treatment to begin being effective, is it that right?

Thanks very much in anticipation for your help XD

[chrisy]

Yes, essentially that is a term to measure the time it takes for a treatment to generate a response - or to show evidence that it is effective.

"Median" is a statistical term that means half are below, half are above. So Median time to response should mean that of the people who responded to the treatment, half of them responded within that time frame.

[Jackie07]

Can't help but to bring up this link that's been quoted by different member in various times:

http://cancerguide.org/median_not_msg.html

[Becky]

Not trying to be picky but the mean is the average value. Let's say that there is a response after these doses:

1
2
4
5
9
10
18

The median is 5 - the true middle number whereas the mean is 7 (the true average). Median works better if the numbers are not that different from each other but there are out liers that will ruin the average (such as small decimals and then the number 100 - that would ruin the average although allows investigators to know that after the 100th dose, a woman responded). But a median is used because in the medical field there can be huge outliers - those that have a huge response with one drop of medicine and those that need 100 doses but most have a response in (lets say in this example) 5 doses.

[kykeon22]

thanks very much for the very helpful answers,

from what i read, it seems that chemioterapy takes at least one or two months to be effective, while hormone therapy takes a little more to kick in and kick the cancer's butt.