Tumors, Di Maio (Aiom): “In oncology, more voice for patients with ad hoc questionnaires”

“How did you feel today?”, “Do you feel nervous?”, “Do you feel pain?”, “Do you have nausea and vomiting?”, “Can you take a long walk?”. More and more cancer patients are answering these questions through ad hoc questionnaires, Patient-Reported Outcomes, or outcomes/results reported by the patient. “PROs are a direct report of the patient’s condition, without the filter, interpretation and modification by healthcare professionals. They are now considered the gold standard for the evaluation of subjective symptoms, both in clinical practice and in clinical studies. Although we are aware of the complexity of PROs as endpoints, the results shown over the last few years by various clinical studies of the impact of this tool on patients’ quality of life support encouraging a cultural and management change by healthcare directorates on the opportunity to make the electronic medical record interact with tools capable of collecting PROs”.

“Even in oncology, using these tools, we can give patients a greater voice,” Di Maio emphasizes, “they are the ones who directly report to us their well-being or discomfort during the diagnostic and therapeutic process they are undergoing. In oncology, we have always used traditional endpoints to describe treatments and their toxicity, an activity measured by clinicians with instrumental tests and not by patients.” However, “it is one thing to collect the patient’s point of view simply in the conversation with the patient during the visit,” the oncologist points out, “it is another thing to use ‘validated’ tools, called PROMS – Patient Reported Outcome Measures, which allow us to collect the information provided by the patient. In recent years, PROMS have become increasingly important in two areas. In clinical research – because we have a better understanding of the quality of life, overall well-being and subjective symptoms of the individual patient – and in clinical practice because they help the doctor-patient relationship, which goes beyond the conversation during the visit.”

Another “important aspect is the real-time reading of the questionnaires – underlines the oncologist – which allows for better management of the individual patient. Among the questions, for example, a recurring one is asked about ‘fatigue”, which is a condition that affects many cancer patients. Sometimes the doctor does not notice this symptom or underestimates it”.