Evidence map›Paper›PMID 36947341›Full record

ArticleSupportive care in cancer : official journal of the Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer2023

Conscientious use of patient-reported outcome measures in supportive care.

Derek K Smith

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Article in Supportive care in cancer : official journal of the Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
2citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

2 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Article
  2. Unraveling assumptions about clinical relevance in patient-reported outcome data : A qualitative study on perspectives of different interest groups.Supportive care in cancer : official journal of the Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer · 2026
    Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

1 author.

Derek K SmithAmerican Dental Association Science and Research Institute, Chicago, IL, USA. smithd@ada.org.

Funding

Developing an oral health screening tool for an integrated model of care to reduce treatment-related oral morbidity in head and neck cancer survivorK23DE028010 · NIDCR · VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER · PI SMITH, DEREK KYLE · 2019 to 2023
$632k
NIDCR NIH HHS K23 DE028010
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

purposePatient-reported outcome measures (PRO) are critical tools to developing an understanding of cancer patients' experience. This paper presents some of the lesser-understood implications of using patient-reported outcome measures in clinical research.

methodsThis study uses a combination of literature sources, real-world examples from supportive care studies, and statistical simulations to demonstrate the operating characteristics of patient-reported measures.

resultsIt is demonstrated that care must be taken in the analysis of PROs as the assumptions of the most common mean-based approaches are often violated including linearity, normally distributed errors, interference with asymptotic convergence via boundary values, and more. Further, the implications of subjective discretization are shown to reduce the apparent statistical power of PRO-based studies.

conclusionsPRO-based studies must be designed conscientiously as each PRO item will demonstrate a varying degree of subjectivity in a given population. Sample sizes of randomized studies using PROs must be inflated to account for this. Analyses should consider using ordinal statistical models until such time as the assumptions of mean-based models can be verified.

Indexed as

NeoplasmsPatient Reported Outcome MeasuresHumansModels, StatisticalPatient-reported outcomesPower calculationStatistical analysisSurvey data

Identifiers

PMID36947341
PMCPMC10033615

What OpenQuestion holds

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Registered trials

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.