Systematic review of the psychometric properties of disease-specific, quality-of-life questionnaires for patients with hepatobiliary or pancreatic cancers
Authors:
Tian, L. and Cao, X. Y.
Abstract:
AIM: To systematically review the quality of the psychometric properties of disease-specific quality-of-life questionnaires for patients with hepatobiliary or pancreatic cancers in order to help researchers and clinicians to select the most appropriate health-related quality-of-life (HRQoL) instruments.
METHODS: MEDLINE from 1950, CINAHL from 1960, EMBASE from 1980, and PsycINFO from 1967, as well as additional sources were searched. The quality of the psychometric properties of the included instruments was evaluated by using the quality criteria for measurement properties of health status questionnaires.
RESULTS: Ten studies that examined seven instruments were identified. The European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire-Biliary Cancer, the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire-Liver Metastases of Colorectal Cancer, the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-Hepatobiliary Questionnaire, and the Quality of Life for Patients with Liver Cancer Instrument achieved satisfactory results in relation to the quality of their psychometric properties.
CONCLUSION: Several well-validated instruments exist to adequately assess disease-specific HRQoL in patients with hepatobiliary or pancreatic cancers. Further improvement of the already-existing, promising measures is recommended.