Overall survival as a primary end point in multiple myeloma trials

Median overall survival for patients with newly diagnosed multiple myeloma may surpass ten years. Nonetheless, many patients face considerable treatment-related morbidity and relapsed disease. Owing to this typically long overall survival, most multiple myeloma trials now use progression-free survival as their primary end point. In this Comment, we highlight circumstances in which this end point does not best answer the questions that various trials seek to investigate.