ABSTRACT
Clinical outcomes (clinical endpoints) fall into two broad types. Final outcomes are those that represent the ultimate goal of treatment; for example, survival or death from a potentially fatal condition, and success or failure in the relief of a symptom such as pain. Intermediate outcomes are biomarkers that reect some biological action of an intervention but that may not necessarily reect a therapeutic eect. Biomarkers that are known to predict nal outcomes are surrogate outcomes (or surrogate markers).
