Role of Real-World Evidence in Informing Cancer Care: Lessons from Colorectal Cancer
Open accessAbstract
The term “real-world evidence” (rwe) describes the analysis of data that are collected beyond the context of clinical trials. The use and application of rwe have become increasingly common and relevant, especially in oncology, because there is growing recognition that randomized controlled trials (rcts) might not be sufficiently representative of the entire patient population that is affected by cancer, and that specific clinical research questions might be best addressed by real-world data. In this brief review, our main aim is to highlight the role of rwe in informing cancer care, particularly focusing on specific examples from colorectal cancer. Our hope is to illustrate the ways in which rwe can complement rcts in improving the understanding of cancer management and how rwe can facilitate cancer treatment decisions for real-world patients encountered in routine clinical care.
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The improvement of overall survival has not been seen in the majority of real-world cohorts, except for patients with long-term survival who most likely have a particularly benign and treatment-responsive tumour biology.
“This improvement of overall survival has not been seen in the majority of real-world cohorts, except for patients with long-term survival who most likely have a particularly benign and treatment-responsive tumour biology.1216”
From Current and emerging concepts for systemic treatment of metastatic colorectal cancer (2025) · cites this paper as [16]
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Current and emerging concepts for systemic treatment of metastatic colorectal cancer
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- Authors
- Batra, A., & Cheung, W. Y.
- Affiliations
- University of Calgary (CA)
- Corresponding author
- Cheung, W.Y.
- Venue
- Current Oncology
- Publisher
- MDPI AG
- Published
- 2019-11-01
- Volume
- 26
- Issue
- 11
- Pages
- 53-56
- ISSN
- 1198-0052 (ISSN-L)
- 1718-7729
- PMC
- PMC6878934
- OpenAlex
- W2990459257
- Cited by
- 31
- References
- 26
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 6 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 4 · 2020: 5 · 2019: 1
- FWCI
- 1.57
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by-nc-nd
- creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (vor)
- Locations
- Current Oncology (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Oncology › Colorectal Cancer Treatments and Studies
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Oncology › Colorectal Cancer Surgical Treatments
- Physical Sciences › Mathematics › Statistics and Probability › Advanced Causal Inference Techniques
- Keywords
- real-world evidence, colorectal cancer, real-world data, randomized controlled trials, cancer research
- MeSH terms
- Humans, Colorectal Neoplasms
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