The association between clinician-based common terminology criteria for adverse events (CTCAE) and patient-reported outcomes (PRO): a systematic review

• Published in: Supportive care in cancer Vol. 24; no. 8; pp. 3669 - 3676
• Main Authors: Atkinson, Thomas M., Ryan, Sean J., Bennett, Antonia V., Stover, Angela M., Saracino, Rebecca M., Rogak, Lauren J., Jewell, Sarah T., Matsoukas, Konstantina, Li, Yuelin, Basch, Ethan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01.08.2016; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Adverse Drug Reaction Reporting Systems - standards; Antineoplastic Agents - adverse effects; Cancer therapies; Drug Monitoring - methods; Drug therapy; Female; Humans; Medicine; Medicine & Public Health; Nursing; Nursing Research; Oncology; Pain Medicine; Patient Reported Outcome Measures; Rehabilitation Medicine; Review Article; Self Report; Side effects; Toxicity; Tumors; Literature review; Self report; Drug monitoring; Drug-related side effects and adverse reactions; Toxicity; Neoplasms
• ISSN: 0941-4355; 1433-7339; 1433-7339
• DOI: 10.1007/s00520-016-3297-9

Purpose Symptomatic adverse events (AEs) are monitored by clinicians as part of all US-based clinical trials in cancer via the U.S. National Cancer Institute’s Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events (CTCAE) for the purposes of ensuring patient safety. Recently, there has been a charge toward capturing the patient perspective for those AEs amenable to patient self-reporting via patient-reported outcomes (PRO). The aim of this review was to summarize the empirically reported association between analogous CTCAE and PRO ratings. Methods A systematic literature search was conducted using PubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science, and Cochrane databases through July 2015. From a total of 5658 articles retrieved, 28 studies met the inclusion criteria. Results Across studies, patients were of mixed cancer types, including anal, breast, cervical, chronic myeloid leukemia, endometrial, hematological, lung, ovarian, pelvic, pharyngeal, prostate, and rectal. Given this mixture, the AEs captured were variable, with many common across studies (e.g., dyspnea, fatigue, nausea, neuropathy, pain, vomiting), as well as several that were disease-specific (e.g., erectile dysfunction, hemoptysis). Overall, the quantified association between CTCAE and PRO ratings fell in the fair to moderate range and had a large variation across the majority of studies ( n  = 21). Conclusions The range of measures used and symptoms captured varied greatly across the reviewed studies. Regardless of concordance metric employed, reported agreement between CTCAE and PRO ratings was moderate at best. To assist with reconciliation and interpretation of these differences toward ultimately improving patient care, an important next step is to explore approaches to integrate PROs with clinician reporting of AEs.