Establishing thresholds for clinical importance for disease-specific EORTC questionnaire modules
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
Recruitment has started is currently ongoing.
The grant contract has been signed in May 2021, ethical approval has been obtained (March 2022), and patient recruitment has been started.
The anchor item questionnaires needed for determining the thresholds for clinical importance have been developed for all 8 EORTC modules covered by this project and have been translated into six required languages.
Currents status:
starting recruitement.
Future plans
Patient recruitment is ongoing; first publication from the project are expected by the end of 2023.
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.