How is overall survival assessed in randomised clinical trials in cancer and are subsequent treatment lines considered? A systematic review

Table 1 Literature search terms

Approach 1 — Overall Survival
Concept	"Overall Survival".tw.	Randomi?ed Controlled Trial.tw.	Cancer.tw.
Synonyms	OS mortality	RCT	Carcinoma Neoplasm Sarcoma
MESH	"Survival Analysis"	Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic	Neoplasms
Approach 2 — Subsequent Treatment Lines
Concept	"Overall Survival".tw.	Randomi?ed Controlled Trial.tw.	"Subsequent Treatments"	Cancer.tw.
Synonyms	OS mortality	RCT	(Line* adj3 therap) (Line adj3 treatment) (Subsequent adj3 therap) (Subsequent adj3 treatment) (Subsequent adj3 medication)	Carcinoma Neoplasm Sarcoma
MESH	"Survival Analysis"	Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic		Neoplasms

Overview of the literature search. Each row for each approach (concept, synonyms, MESH term) was combined with the Boolean operator OR and each column was combined with the Boolean operator AND. Terms which were required to be in the title or abstract were suffixed with .tw., full phrases were specified with quotation marks, terms which could have multiple endings were suffixed with a * and terms which could have English or American spellings were noted with a? So both were included. Any terms where phrases could be given in several ways were specified using the adj3 term which looks for the terms within 3 words of each other. MESH subjects were considered as focussed terms only
OS Overall survival, RCT randomised controlled trial

ISSN: 1745-6215