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Review
. 2018 Mar 5;16(1):40.
doi: 10.1186/s12955-018-0870-6.

A mini-review of quality of life as an outcome in prostate cancer trials: patient-centered approaches are needed to propose appropriate treatments on behalf of patients

Yohann Foucher  1   2 , Marine Lorent  3 , Philippe Tessier  3   4 , Stéphane Supiot  5 , Véronique Sébille  3   4 , Etienne Dantan  3
Affiliations
Review

A mini-review of quality of life as an outcome in prostate cancer trials: patient-centered approaches are needed to propose appropriate treatments on behalf of patients

Yohann Foucher et al. Health Qual Life Outcomes. .

Abstract

Background: Patients with prostate cancer (PC) may be ready to make trade-offs between their quantity and their quality of life. For instance, elderly patients may prefer the absence of treatment if it is associated with a low-risk of disease progression, compared to treatments aiming at preventing disease progression but with a substantial deterioration of their Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQoL). Therefore, it seems relevant to compare the treatments by considering both survival and HRQoL. In this mini-review, the aim was to question whether the potential trade-offs between survival and HRQoL are considered in high impact factor journals.

Methods: The study was conducted from the PubMed database for recent papers published between May 01, 2013, and May 01, 2015. We also restricted our search to nine medical journals with 2013 impact factor > 15.

Results: Among the 30 selected studies, only six collected individual HRQoL as a secondary endpoint by using the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-Prostate (FACT-P) questionnaire. In four studies, the time to HRQoL change was analyzed, but its definitions varied. In two studies, the mean changes in HRQoL between the baseline and the 12- or 16-week follow-up were analyzed. None of the six studies reported in a single endpoint both the quantity and the quality of life.

Conclusions: Our mini-review, which only focused on recent publications in journals with high-impact, suggests moving PC clinical research towards patient-centered outcomes-based studies. This may help physicians to propose the most appropriate treatment on behalf of patients. We recommend the use of indicators such as Quality-Adjusted Life-Years (QALYs) as principal endpoint in future clinical trials.

Keywords: Patient-centered outcomes; Prostate cancer; Quality of life; Review of clinical trials.

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The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

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Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Flow diagram of the literature search strategy and the used patient reported outcomes
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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