Total time a patient spends to undergo treatment including travel time, wait times, seeking care for side effects, follow-up testing, etc.
Deeper Dive
Treatment-related time burdens are important for all illnesses but may be most concerning for patients with advanced cancer and other illnesses who have limited time, according to the 2022 paper in the Journal of Clinical Oncology that defined this term.
In fields such as geriatrics, surgery and cardiology, metrics such as days alive and at home following a procedure and adverse event have become accepted quality measures. However, oncology trials do not typically report time toxicity even though most new cancer treatments are associated with substantial time burdens and small survival benefits.
The paper’s authors, a group of oncologists, gave examples of clinical trials where the time associated with undergoing certain treatments could exceed a patient’s improvement in survival and proposed that trials assess the time burden of therapies by measuring a patient’s “days with physical health care system contact.”
A follow-up study of 435 patients by some of the same researchers showed that even seemingly short visits like a blood draw can turn into hours-long affairs. A separate paper argued that patients without access to transportation and technology suffer disproportionately from time toxicity.