Brouwers PJAM, et al. – By comparing late toxicity scored at the outpatient clinic for a late outcome (OCLO) with patient reported outcome measures (PROMs), experts wanted to find out whether or not breast cancer patients’ visits to an OCLO could be replaced by PROMs. It was reported that PROMs did not underestimate late side–effects at a group level. PROMS could be used to identify patients who experience a heavy burden of side–effects, requiring specific attention, despite the low concordance rate. This finding suggested that patients could be spared a visit to the OCLO.

Methods

• Invitation was sent to all breast cancer patients treated in the institute with adjuvant radiotherapy 10–11 years ago to visit the OCLO, and for filling out PROM-questionnaires.
• Experts appraised concordance rate between PROMs and OCLO-reported outcome and the percentage of patients with ≥2 degrees difference in toxicity level between patient and clinician.

Results

• It was noted that 686 of 1029 patients were still alive.
• OCLO was visited by 249 patients, and 341 patients returned a questionnaire.
• Patients reported higher toxicity rates than clinicians, at a group level.
• Between patient and clinician reported outcome, the mean concordance for individual patients was 58%.
• The clinician reported ≥2 degrees higher toxicity than the patients did, in 2.8%.
• On the other hand, in 6.8% patients reported ≥2 degrees higher toxicity.