An 83 percent reduction in the risk of recurrence or death is among the largest figures reported in lung cancer treatment. It is also one of the most commonly misread numbers in medical news, and understanding it requires three pieces of context that rarely fit in a headline.
The finding comes from LIBRETTO-432, a randomized, double-blind Phase 3 trial of Retevmo (generic name selpercatinib), given after surgery or definitive radiotherapy in patients with early-stage RET fusion-positive non-small cell lung cancer. The trial met its primary endpoint of investigator-assessed event-free survival. The results were published in the New England Journal of Medicine and presented in the plenary session of the 2026 ASCO Annual Meeting, so this is peer-reviewed data rather than a company claim awaiting scrutiny.
