Comparison of central and local serial CT assessments of metastatic renal cell carcinoma patients in a clinical phase IIB study

Abstract

Background Clinical oncological studies attempt to improve precision of data by central radiological assessments. However, it is unclear, to which extent local and central assessments diverge. Purpose To quantify inter-reader variability and the deviation of local from central radiological assessments of computed tomography (CT) scans. Material and Methods This was a sub-study of a randomized clinical phase IIb trial in metastatic renal cell carcinoma (RCC), comparing first-line sorafenib with interferon-alpha-2a (IFN-α-2a). It analyzed agreements of local with central RECIST CT assessments by Cohen’s kappa (κ), symmetry tests, deviations in waterfall plots, Bland–Altman plots, and parametric survival analyses. Results The concordance between local and central radiologic review was quantified by κ = 0.53. While local assessment yielded progressive disease (PD) in 18.6%, central assessment classified 22.5% of patient time points as PD exhibiting only a partial overlap with the 18.6% The tumor shrinkage rates in waterfall plots were 68.1% in local and 55.8% in central review (57.8% and 59% by Reader 1 and Reader 2). Bland–Altman plots identified a systematic shift of tumor change rates by −7.5% in local compared to central assessments, that may reflect a systematic tendency of more favorable results in local assessments. The discordance between local and central review was reflected by a time to progression (TTP) hazard ratio (HR) of 1.73 ( P = 0.0003). Conclusion These data suggest that central radiologic review may reduce technical measurement variability in clinical trials, which should be scrutinized in future studies compared to a volumetric reference.