Understanding Waterfall Plots
By T. Gillespie. 2012
33 citations recorded by the source corpus.
© 2012 Harborside Press C linical trials in oncology continue to offer hope for tumor control. Such hope intensifies as the rapidly advancing knowledge from molecular biology, genetics, and immunology is more readily applied to targeted therapies. The ability to discern genomic or genetic risks and likelihood of response on a biologic basis has enhanced the field’s capacity to tailor therapeutic interventions specific to the individual’s tumor biology and possible host response. The impact of the tumor’s characteristics on outcome, as well as the effect of the patient’s characteristics, e.g. smoking status, become increasingly important to measure and interpret as these variables relate to response, progression-free survival (PFS), and ultimately, overall survival (OS). For decades, overall survival has been the “gold standard” for interpreting clinical trials, as often results of PFS have not translated into long-term survival. In a similar way, Kaplan-Meier curves have long been used to illustrate survival analyses for clinical trials and other statistical evaluations of survival over time. More recently, different types of graphs called waterfall plots have begun to gain in popularity in serving as the means to visually depict results of response to, and types of survival from, oncology clinical trials. An example of a recent publication that relied on waterfall plots for data presentation is Kwak et al.’s New England Journal of Medicine article entitled, “Anaplastic lymphoma kinase inhibition in non-small-cell lung cancer” (Kwak et al., 2010), discussed on page 103 by Beth Eaby-Sandy, MSN, CRNP, OCN®. Since these graphic presentations may be unfamiliar to some readers, this article will comment on their interpretation and application herein.
Subfields: Geophysics, Pulmonary and Respiratory Medicine
How researchers see this paper
The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.
In Geophysics
In Pulmonary and Respiratory Medicine
Citations in the corpus
- Do Not Trust Additive Explanations (2019, methodology): “This form of visualization is appreciated and is widely used to present results in oncology clinical trials (Gillespie, 2012).”