Potential pooling opportunities: cancer.

The pooling of large amounts of clinical data from all available and relevant (diverse) sources in order to achieve greater statistical confidence may be appropriate for most modern and well conducted clinical investigations. However, in order to arrive at specific and meaningful conclusions, such exercises absolutely depend upon the homogeneity (or at least comparability) of the study population and therapy under scrutiny. There are currently many opportunities for pooling studies of cancer treatment. The most attractive disease situations are those with a sufficiently large number of completed randomized studies. Some to be considered are colon cancer, gastric cancer, hepatoma, ovarian cancer and lymphoma.