Drew-
I am not sure I agree but always open to learn.
Toxicity is defined as the degree to which a substance can damage or poison a living organism.
The arguments to that toxicity is a physician centric term that doesn’t capture the full patient experience and QOL I can appreciate.
However, that is why we have PROs vs physician reported toxicity. They have generally poor correlation and both VERY important.
Many patients do not like how people under play the toxicity caused by treatment. It is toxic to them when a drug causes liver failure, a surgery resulted in an MI, or RT resulted in pneumonitis. These are not simply side effects, they are toxicity from exogenous things done to the body.
Their impact to the patient and their perspective is heterogenous and hence we grade QOLs.
What am I missing about the rant against toxicity?
Do you suffer from TOXICITY Labeling Syndrome? Try these daily exercises to break the habit. Repeat after me:
Treatments can have “side effects”
There can be “complications”
We use an “AE” grading system to report them