Clinical benefits as endpoints in advanced non-small cell lung cancer treated with integrative medicine.

"Living with cancer" and symptom control are the features and advantages of integrative medicine in advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) treatment. However, with the current concept of response evaluation criteria by the WHO and RECIST, it is difficult to exhibit the above characteristics. Clinical benefit (CB) is designed as an endpoint recently widely understood and accepted in oncology clinical trials. With the review of its definition and development, we suggest CB to be used as an endpoint in advanced NSCLC treatment with integrative medicine. CB should encompass two connotations: one is improved quality of life and symptom control and the other is disease control rate (DCR), including complete response (CR), partial response (PR), and stable disease (SD). We need to design randomized controlled trials (RCT) to investigate the interrelationship of CB rate and survival to provide high-grade evidence proving that advanced lung cancer patients could really benefit from integrative medicine treatment.