Patient reported outcomes are important in oncology

摘要

Cancer is a major health problem in Australia. As such, improving cancer outcomes is a priority. Traditionally, cancer outcomes such as mortality, survival rates and local recurrence rates have dominated clinical decision making. The past several decades has seen a paradigm shift in that there has been an increased emphasis on patient reported outcomes, both in the research arena as well as clinical practice. However, despite the rapidly expanding volume of outcomes research, uptake into clinical practice has been slow. As treatments in oncology often involve complex tradeoffs between survival and functional sequelae, it is important that the patient is involved in clinical decision making. In order to allow patients to make an informed decision, patient reported outcomes need to accompany and complement traditional objective outcomes such as survival and treatment efficacy.