Planning and reporting of quality-of-life outcomes in cancer trials.

Schandelmaier, S; Conen, K; von Elm, E; You, J J; Blümle, A; Tomonaga, Y; Saccilotto, R; Amstutz, A; Bengough, T; Meerpohl, J J; Stegert, M; Olu, K K; Tikkinen, K A O; Neumann, I; Carrasco-Labra, A; Faulhaber, M; Mulla, S M; Mertz, D; Akl, E A; Sun, X; ... (2015). Planning and reporting of quality-of-life outcomes in cancer trials. Annals of oncology, 26(9), pp. 1966-1973. Oxford University Press 10.1093/annonc/mdv283

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BACKGROUND

Information about the impact of cancer treatments on patients' quality of life (QoL) is of paramount importance to patients and treating oncologists. Cancer trials that do not specify QoL as an outcome or fail to report collected QoL data, omit crucial information for decision making. To estimate the magnitude of these problems, we investigated how frequently QoL outcomes were specified in protocols of cancer trials and subsequently reported.

DESIGN

Retrospective cohort study of RCT protocols approved by six research ethics committees in Switzerland, Germany, and Canada between 2000 and 2003. We compared protocols to corresponding publications, which were identified through literature searches and investigator surveys.

RESULTS

Of the 173 cancer trials, 90 (52%) specified QoL outcomes in their protocol, 2 (1%) as primary and 88 (51%) as secondary outcome. Of the 173 trials, 35 (20%) reported QoL outcomes in a corresponding publication (4 modified from the protocol), 18 (10%) were published but failed to report QoL outcomes in the primary or a secondary publication, and 37 (21%) were not published at all. Of the 83 (48%) trials that did not specify QoL outcomes in their protocol, none subsequently reported QoL outcomes. Failure to report pre-specified QoL outcomes was not associated with industry sponsorship (versus non-industry), sample size, and multicentre (versus single centre) status but possibly with trial discontinuation.

CONCLUSIONS

About half of cancer trials specified QoL outcomes in their protocols. However, only 20% reported any QoL data in associated publications. Highly relevant information for decision making is often unavailable to patients, oncologists, and health policymakers.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

04 Faculty of Medicine > Department of Radiology, Neuroradiology and Nuclear Medicine (DRNN) > Clinic of Nuclear Medicine
04 Faculty of Medicine > Pre-clinic Human Medicine > BioMedical Research (DBMR) > Forschungsbereich Pavillon 52 > Forschungsgruppe Klinische Radiopharmazie
04 Faculty of Medicine > Pre-clinic Human Medicine > BioMedical Research (DBMR) > Forschungsbereich Pavillon 52 > Forschungsgruppe Klinische Radiopharmazie

UniBE Contributor:

Walter, Martin Alexander

Subjects:

600 Technology > 610 Medicine & health

ISSN:

0923-7534

Publisher:

Oxford University Press

Language:

English

Submitter:

Franziska Nicoletti

Date Deposited:

03 Mar 2016 10:43

Last Modified:

05 Dec 2022 14:52

Publisher DOI:

10.1093/annonc/mdv283

PubMed ID:

26133966

Uncontrolled Keywords:

cohort studies; ethics committees; neoplasms; publication bias; quality of life; randomized controlled trials as topic

BORIS DOI:

10.7892/boris.77013

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/77013

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