Kamat - Figure 20
64% of ‘failures’ salvaged with additional 3 weeks of BCG
FIG. 20: After observation over an additional 3 months in the SWOG study,[14] the CR rate in these patients rose from 58% to 69%. However, very importantly, when we provided these patients with 3 weeks of maintenance BCG therapy, the CR rate rose from 55% to 84%, suggesting that 64% of the so-called failures could have been salvaged with an additional 3 weeks of BCG. If these patients had been called BCG failures at the early time point, any results of any such a clinical trial were confounded.
References
Lamm DL, Blumenstein BA, Crissman JD, et al. Maintenance bacillus Calmette-Guerin immunotherapy for recurrent TA, T1 and carcinoma in situ transitional cell carcinoma of the bladder: a randomized Southwest Oncology Group Study. J Urol. 2000;163:1124−9 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0022-5347(05)67707-5
