Presentation (CTI)

OBJECTIVES: Patient-reported outcomes (PRO) and indirect treatment comparisons (ITC) are both useful tools for assessing the value of treatments and facilitating shared treatment decision-making. As efforts to increase patient centricity in healthcare continue, it is important to understand the intersection of PRO and ITC by evaluating the inclusion of PRO in ITC publications.
METHODS: PubMed was searched using the terms ‘patient-reported,’ ‘indirect treatment comparison,’ ‘network meta-analysis,’ ‘population-adjusted indirect comparison,’ ‘matching-adjusted indirect comparison,’ ‘multilevel network meta-regression,’ and ‘simulated treatment comparison.’ Publications around planned ITCs and review articles were excluded as were publications that did not include PRO in the ITC analyses.
RESULTS: The targeted literature search yielded 65 publications since 2014. From 2014 through 2017, five (8%) publications included PRO compared with 16 (25%) publications from 2018 through 2021 and 44 (67%) publications from 2022 through 2024. Almost 90% of the publications utilized a network meta-analysis approach (n=58) versus matching-adjusted indirect comparisons. Indications were diverse in nature with orthopedic publications being most common (orthopedic=37%; dermatology=11%; autoimmune=11%; oncology=9%; CNS=9%; other=23%).
CONCLUSIONS: This study found that PRO have been increasingly incorporated into ITC publications over the past 10 years. However, it is important to note that trials that include PRO-based endpoints may not publish PRO findings as frequently or as comprehensively as other outcomes, thus restricting the ability to include these outcomes in ITC analyses. Despite this limitation, we found a relative increase in PRO inclusion in ITC publications over time across a variety of indications. As efforts like CONSORT-PRO aim to improve the quality of PRO reporting, PRO inclusion in ITC publications may increase further, thereby providing payers, providers, and patients with valuable information.