Esophageal carcinoma is a malignant tumor with high morbidity and mortality worldwide, and surgery is the main treatment currently. With the development of patient-centered care, the effect of surgery should not be limited to the improvement of the incidence of postoperative complications, mortality and other indicators. It is also important to provide experience related to disease and surgery from the perspective of patients. Therefore, more and more attention is paid to patient-reported outcomes by scholars. This paper will provide an overview of the international widely used, reliable and effective scales and researches about patient-reported outcomes in esophageal carcinoma.
The postoperative symptom burden in patients with lung cancer is severe and adversely impairs their quality of life. Symptom management is the cornerstone of medical care. Patient-reported outcome (PRO)-based symptom management is being increasingly recognized as the best "patient-centered care" model in clinical practice. However, the precise implementation of this model in patients undergoing lung cancer surgery is hindered by the lack of a lung cancer surgery-specific scale, implementation standards, clinical application parameters and high-quality researches. The use of a precise and simple PRO scale and an electronic PRO platform may greatly improve the feasibility of implementing this model. Currently, the application of PRO-based symptom management in lung cancer surgery is still being explored and needs to be improved in clinical research and practice.
With the transformation of modern medical models, patient-reported outcomes, clinician-reported outcomes, observer-reported outcomes, and performance outcomes have become internationally recognized clinical outcome assessment indicators, and scales have also become important evaluation tools, among which translation and cross-cultural adaptation are one of the important sources of scales. However, at present, there are fewer guidelines for scale translation in China. At present, domestic scale translation has not yet been unified and standardized in clinical reporting. Most translation reports provide readers with incomplete information, which affects the development of scale translation, and the methodology related to the translation of clinical outcome assessment scales still focuses on patient-reported outcome scales, which creates a gap in terms of the recommendations for the rest of the types of translations, a gap which leads to inconsistencies in the translation methodology and process. In this paper, we will develop specific translation methods and processes for each of the four current types of clinical outcome assessments by combining scale translation guidelines to support a standardized approach to translation, cross-cultural adaptation, and linguistic validation for use in standardizing the process of recommending translations of patient-reported outcome scales, clinical-reported outcome scales, observer-reported outcome scales, and behavioral outcome scales.
ObjectiveTo determine the symptom burden and functional status of patients with early-stage lung cancer at 4 weeks after discharge, and to investigate the influencing factors. MethodsAn analysis was conducted on the clinical data of patients with early-stage lung cancer in a multicenter prospective cohort study conducted in six hospitals in China from November 2017 to January 2020. The MD Anderson Symptom Assessment Scale-Lung Cancer Module (MDASI-LC) was used to evaluate symptoms and functions. Binary logistic regression analysis was used to analyze the influencing factors of moderate to severe functional impairment (≥2 points) and moderate to severe symptoms affecting recovery (≥4 points). ResultsA total of 158 patients were included, including 59 males and 99 females, with an average age of (55.5±9.9) years. At 4 weeks of discharge, the three most severe moderate to severe symptoms were cough (30.4%), shortness of breath (25.3%), and disturbed sleep (22.2%). The proportions of patients with moderate to severe physical and psychological impairment were 53.2% and 38.6%, respectively. Multivariate analysis results showed that shortness of breath was an independent risk factor for moderate to severe postoperative physical impairment [OR=10.12, 95%CI (1.51, 67.60), P=0.017]; cough [OR=5.66, 95%CI (1.52-21.15), P=0.007], pain [OR=12.35, 95%CI (1.21, 126.39), P=0.034], and female sex [OR=4.01, 95%CI (1.10, 14.67), P=0.036] were independent risk factors for moderate to severe psychological impairment; forced expiratory volume in the first second <1.5 L [OR=0.10, 95%CI (0.02, 0.58), P=0.010] and female [OR=2.80, 95%CI (1.17, 6.66), P=0.020] were independent risk factors for moderate to severe shortness of breath; open surgery [OR=6.18, 95%CI (1.54, 24.80), P=0.010] and female [OR=7.33, 95%CI (1.84, 29.20), P=0.005] were independent risk factors for moderate to severe pain. ConclusionPatients with early-stage lung cancer still have a significant symptom burden and functional impairment 4 weeks after discharge. Preoperative attention should be given to patients with poor lung function and female patients. During the operation, open surgery should be avoided as much as possible. Effective management of shortness of breath, pain, and cough symptoms in the postoperative period can promote the functional recovery of patients with early-stage lung cancer.
Objective To analyze the changes of perioperative symptoms of lung cancer patients by using patient-reported outcomes at different time points. MethodsA total of 109 patients who underwent thoracoscopic lung cancer resection in the department of thoracic surgery of our hospital from March to April 2021 were selected, including 55 (50.46%) males and 54 (49.54%) females. The mean age was 55.19±12.12 years. The postoperative symptom scale for lung cancer patients was used to investigate the changes of symptoms before surgery, 1 day after surgery, the day of discharge, and 30 days after surgery. Results The mean hospital stay was 6.89±2.25 days. None of the patients reported any clinical symptoms related to lung cancer before surgery. The most prominent symptoms 1 day after surgery were pain (3.33±0.96 points), nausea (2.81±1.18 points), dizziness (2.00±0.85 points), fatigue (1.89±0.79 points) and shortness of breath (1.79±1.37 points). The patients with dizziness, nausea, fatigue and other symptoms gradually decreased, and the symptoms were relieved significantly (P<0.05). However, the symptoms of conscious pain, cough and shortness of breath lasted for a long time. At 30 days after surgery, 70.64%, 64.22% and 33.03% of patients felt pain, cough and shortness of breath, respectively, and the degree of cough was aggravated (P<0.001). Conclusion Pain, cough, dizziness, shortness of breath and fatigue are the core postoperative symptoms of lung cancer patients. Most postoperative adverse symptoms can be effectively controlled in a short period of time, but pain, cough and shortness of breath still present persistent characteristics, which deserve further study.
Cardiac surgery is associated with high risks, significant trauma, and long recovery periods. With advances in cardiac surgery techniques, the mortality rate and incidence of complications have been steadily decreasing. Patient-reported outcomes (PROs) have gradually become an important area of research in postoperative recovery of cardiac surgery. The use of patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) in this field helps to reflect patients' physiological, psychological, and social functioning during recovery, and provides scientific evidence for clinical interventions, which may further improve prognosis and enhance patient recovery experience. This paper reviews the dimensions of PROMs in the field of cardiac surgery recovery, the current status of existing PROMs scales, and the progress of their application, while also identifying the limitations of the existing tools. Finally, it explores future research directions for PROMs in cardiac surgery patients.
ObjectiveTo summarize the applied research status on the evaluation tools of patient-reported outcome at home and abroad in patients with venous thromboembolism (VTE). MethodBy searching and analyzing the literatures, this paper summarized the concept, evaluation tools and application status of patient-reported outcome in the field of VTE. ResultsThe patient-reported outcomes can more comprehensively and accurately evaluate the disease burden and treatment effect of patients with venous thromboembolism, and can help doctors better understand patients' needs and guide individualized treatment and rehabilitation plans. ConclusionsPatient-reported outcome has a broad application prospect in the field of venous thromboembolism. Further promotion and application of patient-reported outcome can promote the development of medical research and provide reference guidelines for improving the management of patients with venous thromboembolism.
Patient-reported outcome measures (PROM) measure attribute studies refer to studies conducted by investigators to validate the measurement attributes of PROM. The consensus-based standards for the selection of health measurement instruments (COSMIN), an international consensus standard for the selection of health measurement instruments, divides this attribute into three aspects: reliability, validity and responsiveness, and adds interpretability as an additional important feature for evaluating PROM. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the verification methods and principles of the three major measurement attributes in the COSMIN consensus, as well as the significance and direction of interpretability evaluation, and to provide international methodological experience and reference for the development of high-quality PROM psychometric attribute verification in China.
In recent years, the Chengdu Municipal Thoracic Surgery Quality Control Center has preliminarily established a regional quality control system for thoracic surgery through the development of standards, data reporting, and on-site supervision, achieving phased improvements. This review summarizes the current development of Chengdu’s thoracic surgery quality control system, including its organizational structure and scoring methodology, quality indicators based on structure–process–outcome, information technology infrastructure, and multicenter collaboration experiences, and outlines trends in surgical volume, minimally invasive procedure rates, human resources, and care quality metrics. It also analyzes existing challenges such as inter-hospital quality disparities and insufficient interoperability among information platforms. Drawing on domestic and international best practices, we propose development strategies to further enhance the homogenization and continuous improvement of thoracic surgery quality in the region. The Chengdu experience could offer a valuable model for building regional thoracic surgery quality control systems nationwide and for integration with the national quality control platform.
Objective To analyse the consistency of perioperative self-reported pain scores of lung cancer patients with clinical records to provide a basis for optimal pain management. MethodsThe patients with lung cancer who underwent surgical treatment in the Department of Thoracic Surgery, Sichuan Cancer Hospital from November 2017 to January 2020 were selected. They were divided into two groups based on the source of pain data. The self-report group used a questionnaire in which patients self-reported their pain scores, and the pain scores for the clinical record group were extracted from the electronic medical record system. Kappa test was used to compare the concordance of pain scores between the two groups preoperatively, on postoperative 1-6 days and on the day of discharge. McNemar's paired χ2 test was used to compare the differences in pain intensity levels between the two groups. Binary logistic multi-factor regression was used to analyse the factors influencing the concordance of severe pain (7-10 points) between the two groups. Results Totally 354 patients were collected, including 191 males and 163 females, with an average age of 55.64±10.34 years. The median postoperative hospital stay was 6 days. The consistency of pain scores between the two groups was poor (Kappa=–0.035 to 0.262, P<0.05), and the distribution of pain levels at each time point was inconsistent and statistically significant (P<0.001). The percentage of inconsistent severe pain assessment ranged from 0.28% to 35.56%, with the highest percentage of inconsistent severe pain assessment on postoperative day 1 (35.56%). Single-port thoracoscopic surgical access was an influencing factor for inconsistent assessment of severe pain on postoperative day 3 (OR=2.571, P=0.005). Conclusion Self-reported perioperative pain scores of lung cancer patients are poorly aligned with clinical records. Clinical measures are needed to improve the accuracy of patient pain data reporting by choosing the correct assessment method, increasing education, and developing effective quality control measures.