Quality Of Life Measure Helps Prioritize Treatments In Cancer

Main Category: Cancer / Oncology
Article Date: 28 Apr 2009 - 5:00 PDT

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Quality of life is a crucial issue for patients with cancer, and the ability to measure how patient feel about their health before and after treatment is important to understand decisions about whether to treat, and what treatments should be selected.

A group of internationally-based researchers, including Simon Pickard, James Shaw and Todd Lee at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), David Cella at Northwestern University, Chicago, Peter Trask at Pfizer, Connecticut, Neil Aaronson at the Netherlands Cancer Institute, Amsterdam, and Hsiang-Wen Lin at China Medical University in Taiwan sought to develop a cancer patient utility measure based on the widely used quality of life measure in oncology, the European Organization for the Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire (QLQ-C30).

Investigators combined data from over 1000 patients with cancer who completed quality of life ratings using the QLQ-C30 and who provided valuations of their own health, in order to develop a patient-based measure of utility for health which can be used to compare treatments for cancer.

In cancer care, finding treatments that improve the outcomes of patients with cancer is a major priority, and quality of life is among the most important outcomes.

"This utility measure complements cancer treatment endpoints used in oncology, such as survival and tumor response, based on one of the most widely used quality of life measure for clinical trials of cancer, the EORTC QLQ-C30" says Dr. A. Simon Pickard, PhD, Associate Professor at the Center for Pharmacoeconomic Research, UIC, who led the study, "it can be used to better understand the comparative effectiveness of treatments in cancer from the patient's perspective."

This will be discussed in Value in Health, the official journal of the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and outcomes Research.

Value in Health (ISSN 1098-3015) publishes papers, concepts, and ideas that advance the field of pharmacoeconomics and outcomes research and help health care leaders to make decisions that are solidly evidence-based. The journal is published bi-monthly and has a regular readership of over 4,000 clinicians, decision-makers, and researchers worldwide.

ISPOR is a nonprofit, international organization that strives to translate pharmacoeconomics and outcomes research into practice to ensure that society allocates scarce health care resources wisely, fairly, and efficiently.

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ISPOR