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What Overall Survival Really Means

Improved overall survival is a promising result that some women with HR+, HER2- metastatic breast cancer (mBC) are seeing in clinical trials, so it's important to understand what exactly the term means. Watch the video below to learn about the significance of overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS)—2 very important terms with very different meanings.

There Is a Difference Between Progression-Free Survival and Overall Survival:
Icon PROGRESSION-FREE SURVIVAL (PFS)

PROGRESSION-FREE SURVIVAL (PFS)

The amount of time cancer doesn’t grow or spread while on treatment. It’s about putting cancer growth on pause.
 

OTHER WAYS TO DESCRIBE PFS

  • Amount of time disease progression is delayed

  • Living longer without your cancer getting worse

  • More time without disease progression

Icon OVERALL SURVIVAL (OS)

OVERALL SURVIVAL (OS)

The total time living with metastatic breast cancer. It’s about adding more days to a person’s life.
 

OTHER WAYS TO DESCRIBE OS

  • Living longer

  • More time to live

  • A chance to live longer

Overall survival is the gold standard in cancer clinical trials. Not all treatments have proven overall survival. KISQALI has—multiple times
Graph explaining overall survival. If life was a race, no one would want to reach the finish line. PFS would help by putting the race on pause for a while. OS would help by moving the finish line further away to make the race last longer.
KISQALI + hormone therapy has been proven to extend the lives of people with HR+, HER2- metastatic breast cancer