Gastric Cancer (update of QLQ-STO22)

Although the EORTC QLQ-STO22 is one of the most well-established instruments for measuring the HRQOL of people with gastric cancer, the module is in need of a potential update in order to capture the Health related quality of life (HRQoL) issues related to the new and diverse treatment strategies which have emerged since the development of the original QLQ-STO22 and to include the perspective of patients and health care professionals from East Asia.

This study is conducted within the network of the EORTC QLG, EORTC Gastrointestinal Tract Cancer Group, and the Japan Clinical Oncology Group (JCOG) Stomach Cancer Study Group including different countries of the European Union, UK, China, Mongolia, South Korea and Japan.

The update of the QLQ-STO22 project has two overall objectives:
1) Evaluate the need for an updated QLQ-STO22 to accommodate changes to treatment modalities and to include the perspective of patients and clinicians from East Asia.
2) To develop a provisional draft updated STO22 covering new treatment schedules and the experiences of patients with GC from East Asia thus positioning the STO22 more globally as a standard module to assess HRQOL of GC patients.

To identify the HRQOL issues of importance and relevance to people with gastric cancer globally (including East Asia), we have reviewed the literature and asked patients and health care professionals to share their experiences and opinions. During the first phase, we asked 61 people with stomach cancer, to comment on the existing QLQ-STO22 to see if the questions are relevant to them and whether anything has been overlooked. We wanted to find out about all the different ways the effects of stomach cancer and its treatment affect people’s lives. The research explored the best way to measure the effects of stomach cancer on people’s lives and looked at whether the current questionnaire (QLQ-STO22) is suitable.  We want to be sure we are capturing issues from people in different countries.  We especially want to understand the issues for people in East Asia where people’s experiences have been under reported. We then asked 18 health care professionals and a further 43 people with gastric cancer to review the questionnaire and the potential new issues we have identified.

The systematic review of Health Related Quality of Life (HRQoL) issues related to Gastric Cancer has been published.

8 sites – UK, Japan (2 centres), Spain, Cyprus, Mongolia, Malaysia and Turkey took part in Phase 1a with 61 interviews with people with gastric cancer completed.

10 sites took part in Phase 1b – UK (3 centres), Japan (2 centres), Turkey, Spain, India, Malaysia, Mongolia, South Korea, China and Norway with 43 people with gastric cancer and 18 health care professionals.

The results of this work suggest that the current version of the measure (QLQ-STO22) can still be used but that there might be merit in updating the questionnaire to include issues which are missing in the current version: flatulence, neuropathy and eating small amounts.

In the next phase of our work (Phase 3) we will pre-test the draft updated version of the measure.

Proposed Phase 3 start date anticipated to be July 2025.

We invite any collaborators who are interested in joining this project as it moves into Phase 3 (Pilot testing an updated version of the EORTC QLQ-ST022) to get in touch with Samantha Sodergren: S.C.Sodergren@soton.ac.uk

We conducted a study which asked adults with stomach cancer to look at issues that are relevant to them. This helped us find out about all the different ways stomach cancer and its treatment affect people’s lives. We wanted to find the best way to measure the effects of stomach cancer on people’s lives and whether a questionnaire we already have is suitable. We showed people with stomach cancer a questionnaire which has been developed for people like them and asked them about the questionnaire. We were interested in their thoughts on the questions and whether they had experienced anything not covered by the questionnaire. We were particularly interested in whether the effects of stomach cancer are the same for people in different parts of the world, including East Asia.