Patient-reported outcomes in ovarian cancer: are they key factors for decision making?

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Patient-reported outcomes (PROs), including quality-of-life considerations, are increasingly becoming key factors in clinical decision making.

Areas covered: This review provides an overview of the current status of PROs in guiding clinical trial design and clinical decision making in patients with ovarian cancer and previews the future potential of PROs in these settings.

Expert commentary: In ovarian cancer, considerable discord exists between patients and physicians regarding perceived symptom burden. During maintenance therapy, it is important that the most appropriate PROs (i.e. endpoints and respective measuring tools) are selected to evaluate patients. Research continues into identifying PROs most likely to facilitate and enhance reporting of symptoms, adverse events, and subjective benefit. Some recent studies performed in ovarian cancer, such as the SOLO2/ENGOT-Ov21 and AURELIA trials, have reported valuable PRO data pertaining to the Trial Outcome Index (TOI) score, quality-adjusted progression-free survival (QAPFS), and time without symptoms and toxicity (TWiST). In future, PROs are likely to become increasingly important in clinical trial design, regulatory procedures, and provision of valuable prognostic information to patients and physicians in clinical practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Clinical decision making
• ovarian cancer
• patient-reported outcomes
• quality-adjusted progression-free survival
• quality of life

Declaration of interest

F Hilpert has received honoraria and travel grants from AstraZeneca, Novartis, PharmaMar, and Roche. A du Bois has received honoraria for advisory boards from Astra Zeneca, Clovis, PharmaMar, Roche, and Tesaro. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

Reviewer disclosures

Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

Additional information

Funding

Writing assistance was provided by Content Ed Net (Madrid, Spain) with funding from PharmaMar (Madrid, Spain).