Cancer patients' function, symptoms and supportive care needs: a latent class analysis across cultures

• Published in: Quality of Life Research Vol. 24; no. 1; pp. 135 - 146
• Main Authors: Reese, Jennifer Barsky, Blackford, Amanda, Sussman, Jonathan, Okuyama, Toru, Akechi, Tatsuo, Bainbridge, Daryl, Howell, Doris, Snyder, Claire F.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cham Springer 01.01.2015; Springer Science and Business Media LLC; Springer International Publishing; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Adult; Aged; Asian Continental Ancestry Group; Asian People; Breast cancer; Canada; Cancer; Clinical outcomes; Colorectal cancer; Culture; Female; Health Services Needs and Demand; Hospitals; Humans; Latent class analysis; Lung cancer; Male; Medicine; Medicine & Public Health; Middle Aged; Needs; Neoplasms; Neoplasms - physiopathology; Oncology; Palliative care; Patients; Prostate; Public Health; Quality of Life; Quality of Life Research; QUANTITATIVE METHODS SPECIAL SECTION; Questionnaires; Sample size; Social Support; Sociology; Surgery; Surveys and Questionnaires; Canada; Supportive care needs; Patient-reported outcomes; Latent class analysis; Quality of life; Cancer
• ISSN: 0962-9343; 1573-2649; 1573-2649
• DOI: 10.1007/s11136-014-0629-4

Purpose Patient-reported outcomes (PROs) are an umbrella term covering a range of outcomes, including symptoms, functioning, health-related quality of life, and supportive care needs. Research regarding the appropriate PRO questionnaires to use is informative. A previously published latent class analysis (LCA) examined patterns of function, symptoms, and supportive care needs in a sample of US cancer patients. The current analysis investigated whether the findings from the original study were replicated in new samples from different countries and whether a larger sample combining all the data would affect the classes identified. Methods This secondary analysis of data from 408 Japanese and 189 Canadian cancer patients replicated the methods used in the original LCA using data from 117 US cancer patients. In all samples, subjects completed the EORTC-QLQ-C30 and Supportive Care Needs Survey Short Form-34 (SCNS-SF34). We first dichotomized individual function, symptom, and need domain scores. We then performed LCA to investigate the patterns of domains for each of the outcomes, both in the individual country samples and then combining the data from all three samples. Results Across all analyses, class assignment was made by level of function, symptoms, or needs. In individual samples, only two-class models ("high" vs. "low") were generally identifiable while in the combined sample, threeclass models ("high" vs. "moderate" vs. "low") best fit the data for all outcomes. Conclusions In this analysis, the level of burden experienced by patients was the key factor in defining classes.