Patient-reported outcomes: a Polaris for POLARIX

In this issue of Blood, Thompson et al 1 present patient-reported outcomes (PROs) of previously untreated patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) who received polatuzumab vedotin, rituximab, cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, prednisone (Pola-R-CHP) compared with rituximab, cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine, prednisone (R-CHOP).Both treatments resulted in rapid, clinically meaningful, and durable improvements in lymphoma symptoms and health-related quality of life (HRQoL), and treatmentrelated symptoms were similar, returning to pretreatment baseline by end of treatment.This large analysis demonstrates that most patients can gain the progression-free survival (PFS) benefit of Pola-R-CHP over R-CHOP without worse effects on their lived experiences.POLARIX is the first positive trial of first-line treatment of DLBCL in about 15 years, with Pola-R-CHP demonstrating a 6.5% absolute improvement in 2-year PFS over RCHOP. 2 These practice-changing findings resulted in approval of Pola-R-CHP by the US Food and Drug Administration and the European Commission.This current report on the preplanned secondary end point of PROs complements the primary publication by amplifying patients' voices and bringing the issue of treatment tolerability into clear focus.