Telephone follow-up is one of the important ways to follow up patients. High-quality follow-up can benefit both doctors and patients. However, clinical research-related follow-up is often faced with problems such as time-consuming, laborious and poor patient compliance. The authors belong to a team that has been committed to the study of patient-reported outcomes for a long time. The team has carried out long-term follow-up of symptoms, daily function and postoperative complications of more than 1 000 patients after lung cancer surgery, and accumulated certain experience. In this paper, the experience of telephone follow-up was summarized and discussed with relevant literatures from the aspects of clarifying the purpose of clinical research follow-up, understanding the needs of patients in follow-up, and using follow-up skills.
ObjectiveTo develop a symptom and function assessment scale for patients after Nuss procedure for pectus excavatum and to test its reliability and validity. MethodsFollowing the principles and procedures of patient-reported outcome (PRO) scale development stipulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, an initial draft was formed through literature analysis, qualitative interviews, and Delphi expert consultation. The preliminary draft was used to conduct a pre-survey on patients who underwent Nuss procedure for pectus excavatum at Guangdong Provincial People's Hospital, and the reliability and validity of the scale were tested. ResultsA preliminary PRO-based symptom and function scale was constructed, covering two domains: symptoms and impact on daily functions. The symptom dimension includes six items: chest tightness, palpitations, pain, shortness of breath, foreign body sensation of the steel plate, and distress; while the impact on daily functions includes four items: difficulty in getting out of bed or lying down, raising arms, bending over, and standing or sitting for a long time. A total of 73 patients who underwent Nuss procedure for pectus excavatum were included in the questionnaire survey, with 70 valid questionnaires collected, including 64 males and 6 females, with 56 patients aged 12-17 years and 14 patients≥18 years. Through exploratory factor analysis, two common factors were extracted, with a cumulative variance contribution rate of 70%. The Cronbach's α coefficient of the scale is 0.917. ConclusionThe scale developed in this study has good reliability and validity, high reliability and stability, and can be used as an evaluation tool for the recovery status of patients after Nuss procedure for pectus excavatum.
ObjectiveTo investigate the preoperative symptom burden and quality of life of patients undergoing lung cancer surgery.MethodsThis study was a cross-sectional study. We used the MD Anderson Symptom Inventory-lung cancer module (MDASI-LC) and the single-item quality of life scale (UNISCALE) to collect the preoperative patient-reported outcomes of 265 patients with lung cancer from November 2017 to July 2019 in Sichuan Cancer Hospital.ResultsOf 265 patients, 90.9% had preoperative symptoms. The five most common symptoms were coughing (66.8%), dry mouth (53.6%), memory problems (52.8%), disturbed sleep (52.1%) and fatigue (44.2%). The five most common moderate to severe symptoms were disturbed sleep (23.0%), distress (18.5%), memory problems (16.6%), coughing (16.2%) and dry mouth (16.2%). Patients with early-stage lung cancer had less pain, fatigue, shortness of breath, lack of appetite, numbness and coughing, and their symptoms had less impact on work (including housework), relations with other people, walking and enjoyment of life as well as better quality of life before surgery (P<0.05). Patients with adenocarcinoma had milder coughing and a better quality of life before surgery (P<0.05). Symptom score was positively correlated with symptom interference with life score (r=0.66, P<0.01) and negatively correlated with quality of life score (r=-0.41, P<0.01).ConclusionMost patients undergoing lung cancer surgery have a mild symptom burden before surgery. The most common and severe symptoms are coughing, dry mouth, lung cancer and disturbed sleep. Patients with early-stage lung cancer have a milder symptom burden and a better quality of life.
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.
Pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) has become an indispensable component of the modern care continuum for lung cancer. Substantial evidence confirms its definitive value in improving perioperative outcomes, mitigating treatment-related side effects, and enhancing quality of life in patients with advanced disease. However, a significant "implementation gap" exists between its proven clinical benefits and widespread application, primarily characterized by the lack of standardized protocols, uncertainty in optimal timing, and low patient adherence. Bridging this gap requires a dual-driven approach: harnessing technological innovations such as telerehabilitation, wearable devices, and artificial intelligence to enhance accessibility and personalization, alongside optimizing care models through multidisciplinary team collaboration. This review systematically analyzes the evidence, implementation barriers, and innovative pathways for PR in lung cancer care, aiming to catalyze its transition from an ancillary option to a core standard of care, and envisions a new paradigm of personalized PR that is patient-centered, data-driven, and technologically integrated.
Cardiac surgery is often associated with significant trauma, which can lead to a suboptimal recovery experience for patients. With advancements in cardiovascular surgical techniques, the rates of surgical mortality and complications have significantly decreased, leading to increased attention on patients' subjective recovery experiences after the surgery. Patient-reported outcomes (PROs) refer to the feedback provided directly by patients regarding their health status, functional abilities, and treatment experiences. Accurate assessment and timely intervention of PROs have become a growing area of interest in the academic community, with improvements in certain PROs showing significant correlations with prognostic benefits. However, there remains controversy regarding which dimensions of PROs should be prioritized in the postoperative recovery of cardiac surgery patients and how to select appropriate evaluation scales for these dimensions. We referenced the research progress both domestically and internationally, combined with clinical practices from around the world, and widely solicited expert opinions to reach a consensus on the evaluation dimensions of postoperative PROs for cardiac surgery patients. This includes the overall recovery status of patients (surgical recovery, quality of life) and its nine dimensions (pain, physiology, sleep, thirst, frailty, activity, cognition, mental health, and social support). This consensus comprehensively considers the application of PROs scales, and introduces 1-3 scales with the widest application and most solid evidence for each dimension, aiming to further standardize the evaluation dimensions of PROs after cardiac surgery in China and the selection of scales for each dimension.
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.
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.
Objective To comprehensively analyze the research trends in the reported outcomes for lung cancer patients and related management, reveal research hotspots and trends, and provide references for future related research. Methods We searched for relevant literature in the Web of Science core collection, PubMed, and Scopus databases from inception to December 31, 2023. CiteSpace bibliometric software was used to analyze the distribution of authors, countries and regions, research institutions, keyword co-occurrence, keyword burst, and to generate keyword clusters and timeline analysis maps. Results A total of 478 qualified publications were included, and the number of published papers showed an overall upward trend. The highest number of articles was published in the United States. The journal with the highest number of articles was Journal of Pain and Symptom Management, and the journal with the highest citation frequency was Journal of Clinical Oncology. The results of keyword burst analysis showed that hot topics mainly focused on areas such as prospective study, physical activity, exercise, vomiting, survival. ConclusionAlthough the research on lung cancer surgical treatment and the management of patients is developing rapidly, the application of management based on reported outcomes of lung cancer patients is still at a nascent stage, and needs to be continuously improved in clinical research and practice. The establishment of relevant assessment systems needs to be improved. In the future, more researchers need to focus on this area, strengthen multi-regional and multi-institutional collaborations, and accelerate research progress in the management of reported outcomes in lung cancer patients.
Objective To evaluate the reporting quality and influencing factors of patient-reported outcome (PRO) data in randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of lung cancer. Methods RCTs of lung cancer with PRO as either primary or secondary endpoints were searched from PubMed, EMbase, Medline, CNKI, Wanfang Data, and VIP databases between January 1, 2010 and April 20, 2024. Reporting quality of included RCTs were assessed based on the CONSORT-PRO extension. Descriptive statistics and bivariate regression analysis were used to describe the reporting quality and analyze the factors influencing the reporting quality. Results A total of 740 articles were retrieved. After screening, 53 eligible RCTs of lung cancer with 22 780 patients were included. The patients were mainly with non-small cell lung cancer (84.91%), with the median sample size of the included studies was 364.0 (160.5, 599.5) patients. The primary PRO tool used was the EORTC QLQ-C30 (60.38%). There were 52 (98.11%) studies whose PRO measured the domain of "symptom management of cough, dyspnea, fatigue, pain, etc.", and 45 (84.91%) studies measured "health-related quality of life". Multicenter studies accounted for 84.91%, and randomized non-blind trials accounted for 62.26%. PRO was used as the primary endpoint in 33.96% of the studies and as secondary endpoints in 66.04%. The reliability and validity of the PRO tools were explicitly mentioned in 11.32% and 7.55% of the studies, respectively. The average completeness of reporting according to the CONSORT-PRO guidelines was 60.00%, ranging from 25.00% to 93.00%. The main factors affecting the completeness of CONSORT-PRO reporting included sample size and publication year. For every increment in sample size, the completeness of reporting increased by 27.5% (SE=0.00, t=2.040, P=0.046). Additionally, studies published after 2018 had a 67.2% higher completeness of reporting compared to those published in or before 2018 (SE=17.8, t=–3.273, P=0.006). Conclusion The study reveals that the overall reporting quality of PRO in lung cancer RCTs is poor. Particularly, the reporting of PRO measures reliability and validity, PRO assumptions, applicability, and handling of missing data need further improvement. Future research should emphasize comprehensive adherence to the CONSORT-PRO guidelines.