Published Jun 17, 2013

Chicago, IL, USA - The patient’s perspective is fast becoming an important component for health care decisions. For example, the Food and Drug Administration now has guidance for the development of patient-reported outcome instruments. Patients with advanced kidney cancer are most concerned about fatigue, treatment side effects, and worry about one’s condition getting worse. Kidney cancer physicians more readily focus on symptoms that suggest disease progression or factors that can reduce or delay treatment such as bone pain, fever, and weight loss. The NFKSI-19 symptom index demonstrated preliminary reliability and validity supporting its use in assessing health-related quality of life in clinical trials and routine clinical practice. Health-related quality of life is critical, particularly when curative treatment options are limited. Both the clinician and patient perspectives have been included in the article “Development and Initial Validation of the NCCN/FACT Symptom Index for Advanced Kidney Cancer,” published in Value in Health. Nan Rothrock, PhD, author of the study states, “By utilizing both patient and clinician perspectives, we have a measure that addresses patients’ concerns about quality of life as well as symptoms that are critical for treatment planning.”

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