Comparison of the EORTC QLU-C10D

Clinical validation studies of the QLU-C10D have demonstrated its responsiveness and sensitivity across different cancer contexts. In a retrospecitve study of esophageal cancer patients, the QLU-C10D showed good convergent validity with the EQ-5D-3L but was more responsive to short-term, clinically meaningful changes in health status after surgery. This highlighted its ability to detect recovery and deterioration patterns that generic instruments may underrepresent.

Retrospective analyses of  lung cancer trial data provided further validation. When compared with the EQ-5D-3L, the QLU-C10D consistently displayed superior sensitivity to differences between treatment arms and responsiveness to within-patient change, as reflected in higher effect sizes and relative efficiency scores. Using six different national value sets, the QLU-C10D produced robust and consistent results, outperforming the EQ-5D-3L in the majority of comparative indices. This demonstrated both the measure’s stability across tariff systems and its cancer-specific discriminatory power. These findings confirmed its usefulness in capturing clinically expected outcomes in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) trials.

Beyond lung and esophageal cancer, validation studies in glioblastoma, thyroid cancer, and mixed cancer samples showed similarly favorable psychometric properties. Across these populations, the QLU-C10D maintained strong responsiveness and sensitivity compared with generic instruments. Collectively, these clinical validations support the QLU-C10D as a robust, cancer-specific preference-based measure that improves the detection of clinically relevant quality-of-life changes in trials and observational research. There were indications that its advantages over generic measures disappear in survivors.

A comprehensive user manual has been developed within the project to support the application and proper use of the QLU-C10D.

See publications below.

This study is now closed.

The QLU-C10D is a kind of questionnaire, developed to capture cancer patients’ quality of life and relate it to survival time and costs of treatment in health economic studies. This study investigated whether the QLU-C10D was able to capture cancer patients’ quality of life issues more precisely than generic questionnaires which were not designed specifically for cancer patients.