OBJECTIVES: Improving Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQoL) is an increasingly significant goal in oncology, and Hodgkin’s Lymphoma (HL) is no exception. With the increased demand for patient reported outcomes, reference values (RVs) are needed for designing clinical trials (CTs), interpreting effects of new therapies and contextualizing the results of individual patients. This abstract describes RVs for HL using the EORTC QLQ-C30.

METHODS: We searched EORTC HL CTs where baseline HRQOL before treatment was assessed with QLQ-C30 (version 3.0). We reported mean scores of the overall sample and by disease stage (III, IV), age (<25, 25-40, 40<) and gender (male, female).

RESULTS: One phase III CT (EORTC 20012 – 343 patients aged between 16 and 60 years, with no comorbidities and treated with BEACOPP or ABVD) was included in the descriptive analysis. At baseline, the mean Global Health/QoL score was 54.86. Mean functional scores ranged from 56.82 (role functioning) to 84.51 (cognitive functioning), and mean symptoms scores ranged from 9.19 (diarrhea) to 49.97 (fatigue). Considering Osoba et al.’s (1999) recommendations, neither moderate (> 10) nor large (> 20) clinically meaningful differences were found among the subgroups. However, several small differences (> 5) were found: social functioning (76.45 vs. 68.71), pain (30.14 vs. 35.74) and insomnia (43.62 vs. 51.54) differed between stages of the disease while appetite loss (35.33 vs. 25 vs. 27.61) and constipation (11 vs. 14.07 vs. 19.95) varied between age groups. Comparing gender, emotional (67.91 vs. 62.17), cognitive (85.93 vs. 80.16) and social (72.55 vs. 65.45) functioning were better in men. Fatigue (48.28 vs. 55.16) and appetite loss (26.87 vs. 35.71) were prevalent symptoms in women.

CONCLUSIONS: These results can aid the interpretation of HRQoL data among a small subgroup of patients. An update on a bigger and more representative sample would confirm RVs’ relevance in research and clinical practice.