Standard of care

The best treatment that experts currently agree on for a given situation — the care you'd normally be offered today.

“Standard of care” is the treatment that’s widely accepted as the right approach right now for a particular cancer and situation — proven, and recommended by experts. It’s the care you’d typically be offered outside of any trial.

This term matters when you’re weighing a trial. Most cancer trials don’t ask you to give up the standard of care — they compare a new approach against it, or add something to it. In many trials, the control group receives the standard of care, so people in the study can expect today’s best treatment as a floor, not less.