„Patient-reported outcomes“ in der Supportivtherapie

Broadly understood, supportive care includes both oncological supportive therapy as well as the supportive therapeutic interventions of other specialities and disciplines. The German S3 cross-sectional oncological guidelines provide orientation for implementation. Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) are increasingly used for both monitoring and needs screening. Their scope and redundancy limit their use in routine practice. A current development is the combination of individual items from validated questionnaires into new PROMs in order to collect targeted patient-reported outcomes (PROs) with minimal effort.

The study aims to present the need and recommendations for use of PROMs in the German S3 cross-sectional guidelines, complemented by international recommendations. From the recommended questionnaires, a minimal set of characteristics for guideline-compliant screening for stress, symptoms, or problems is compiled.

Applied methods comprised a targeted literature search and analysis of the German S3 cross-sectional guidelines and the PROMs recommended therein.

Various PROMs are recommended in the S3 cross-sectional guidelines, which record a different number of items. A guideline-compliant minimum set includes 12 items (psychosocial distress, anxiety, depression, fatigue, pain, breathlessness, nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite, constipation, oral problems, and sensory polyneuropathy) with at least 15 individual questions.

It was possible to compile a common minimum set of guideline recommendations. Functionality, important physical symptoms/risks, and social/financial concerns were omitted. A Delphi process could clarify the extent to which the minimum set for patient-orientated supportive care should be supplemented by further items.