Kuan Liao
Study Background
Patient-reported outcomes measures (PROMs) are tools to assess patients’ views on aspects of their health and condition. Treatments of lung cancer often need to consider several clinical outcomes, such as treatment response, treatment toxicities and survival (i.e., time to death).
Why is this study needed?
There is growing interest in collecting and using PROMs to predict clinical outcomes for supporting clinical decision-making in patients with lung cancer, but it is unclear if good quality research has been done on this topic. So, we aimed to explore to what extent, how and how well studies have been conducted on using PROMs for predicting future clinical outcomes in people with lung cancer.
What are the main findings of the abstract?
We found 31 studies, reporting the results of 33 unique analyses. The majority of the studies identified were low-quality and at an early stage of research. PROMs designed specifically for cancer patients, and those measured at the time of treatment start and summarised as a score for each aspect of health, were most frequently used to inform clinical decision-making. Except for one study predicting health status one year after surgery, all the rest of the studies predicted survival. We also found that the methodological quality of the existing studies was poor.
Where should research on this topic go from here?
Findings from this study inspire more research on the value of using PROMs to provide information for the future clinical outcomes in addition to survival, such as treatment responses, treatment toxicities and treatment early discontinuation.
Abstract will be presented in the Thursday Afternoon Poster Presentations: Slot 6 on 20 October, 3:25 pm – 3:40 pm.
This newsletter editorial represents the views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of ISOQOL.
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