Establishing thresholds for clinical importance for disease-specific EORTC questionnaire modules

Principal investigator(s)
Johannes Giesinger
Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics Medical University of Innsbruck
Innsbruck, Austria
Project coordinator(s)
Micha Pilz
Medical University of Innsbruck
Innsbruck, Austria

Project summary

To improve interpretation of patient-reported outcome (PRO) data collected with the EORTC questionnaire modules the project develops thresholds for clinical importance for the following modules: QLQ-LC29 (lung), QLQ-PR25 (prostate), QLQ-BR45 (breast), QLQ-CR29 (colorectal), QLQ-NMIBC24, QLQ-BLM30 (bladder), QLQ-EN24 (endometrium), QLQ-H&N43 (head and neck), QLQ-CX24 (cervical cancer). These thresholds will facilitate interpretation of PRO scores collected in daily clinical practice and of trial results.

Achievements

The grant contract has been signed in May 2021 and ethical approval has been obtained (March 2022)

Future plans

Starting recruitment

Recruitment start (milestone 1) is expected for April 2022

For patients

The EORTC quality of life questionnaires are used to assess the perspective of cancer patients on their disease and its treatment. Such questionnaires allow to calculate scores that reflect the degree of a symptom or problem. This project develops thresholds that help to determine what degree of a symptom or problem should be considered clinically important. Following a previous project focusing on general symptoms and problems, this project focuses on symptoms that are specific to certain types of cancer.