Thresholds for clinical importance were established to improve interpretation of the EORTC QLQ-C30 in clinical practice and research

The objective of this study was to establish thresholds for clinical importance (TCIs) for the five functioning and nine symptom scales of the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire Core 30 (EORTC QLQ-C30). In this diagnostic study, cancer patients w...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of clinical epidemiology 2020-02, Vol.118, p.1-8
Main Authors: Giesinger, Johannes M., Loth, Fanny L.C., Aaronson, Neil K., Arraras, Juan I., Caocci, Giovanni, Efficace, Fabio, Groenvold, Mogens, van Leeuwen, Marieke, Petersen, Morten Aa, Ramage, John, Tomaszewski, Krzysztof A., Young, Teresa, Holzner, Bernhard
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accuracy
Cancer
Clinical medicine
Clinical oncology
Clinical significance
Cut-offs
Diagnostic systems
EORTC QLQ-C30
Epidemiology
Medical personnel
Medical research
Pain
Patient-reported outcome measures
Patients
Professional ethics
Professionals
Quality of life
Questionnaires
Questions
Thresholds
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Summary:The objective of this study was to establish thresholds for clinical importance (TCIs) for the five functioning and nine symptom scales of the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire Core 30 (EORTC QLQ-C30). In this diagnostic study, cancer patients with mixed diagnoses and treatments completed the EORTC QLQ-C30 and anchored the questions in each domain in terms of their clinical importance. The anchor questions, concerned limitations in daily life, need for help/care, and the worries of the patient and his/her partner/family. These questions allowed categorizing patients into whether they exhibited a clinically important symptom/functional impairment for each scale and performing a receiver operating characteristic curve analysis to establish TCIs. Data from 498 patients from six European countries (mean age 60.4 years, 55.2% women) were analyzed. For the TCIs generated using the patient questionnaire data, the EORTC QLQ-C30 scales showed sensitivity values between 0.71 and 0.97 and specificity values between 0.62 and 0.92 (area under the curve above 0.80 for all scales). This EORTC Quality of Life Group study provides TCIs for the functioning and symptom scales of the EORTC QLQ-C30. These TCIs can increase the interpretability of the questionnaire results and foster its use in daily clinical practice and in clinical research.
ISSN:0895-4356
1878-5921
DOI:10.1016/j.jclinepi.2019.10.003