70-Gene Signature in Early-Stage Breast Cancer — Comments (eg. QOL...)

70-Gene Signature in Early-Stage Breast Cancer — NEJM

The authors reply:

.....We agree that evaluating health-related quality of life is extremely important. However, patients in our study could potentially have been asked to sign four informed-consent documents, depending on their group assignment, and all the study patients had to comprehend the complexities of the trial, including information on genomic testing. We decided that the addition of quality-of-life questionnaires to the overall study would be too burdensome for the patients, a decision that was supported by patient advocates. At the time of the study, there existed no validated instrument to evaluate the psychological effects of genomic testing on patients, although we agree that such evaluation is important.