Health-related quality of life (FACT-GP) in Sweden

Ann-Sophie Lindqvist Bagge,Anders Carlander,Roger Olofsson Bagge,Claudia Fahlke

doi:10.1186/s12955-020-01420-1

Abstract

BackgroundMany studies have used disease-specific instruments, such as the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy (FACT), when studying health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in patients. Few studies however, have described normative HRQOL values in the general population using FACT - General Population (FACT-GP). The general aim of the present study is thus to describe the normative HRQOL values in the general Swedish population by using the FACT-GP instrument and to investigate to what degree sociodemographic factors and status of self-rated health (SRH) correlate with HRQOL.MethodsThe participants consisted of a pre-stratified (gender, age and education) sample of Swedish citizens that previously had enrolled to be a part of a web panel hosted by a research institute (SOM Institute) at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. The HRQOL was assessed by using the FACT-GP and SRH.ResultsA higher FACT-GP score was mainly associated with males, higher age, higher income and better SRH. The results showed that the Swedish sample scored lower on FACT-GP than previous studies.ConclusionsSince HRQOL is frequently used as an important endpoint in healthcare research, there is an increasing need for normative data. The results from this study serve as a general population standard against which other studied HRQOL-data could be evaluated.

Highlights

During the last decades there has been an increasing trend in clinical studies to use patient reported outcomes (PROs) in addition to clinical outcomes
Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy (FACT)-GP is based on four basic domains of self-perceived health-related quality of life (HRQOL); Physical well-being (PWB), Social/family well-being (SWB), Emotional well-being (EWB) and Functional well-being (FWB), and a total summary score of FACT - General Population (FACT-GP) with each item rated on a 5-point Likert scale
Cancer The results showed that there was no significant difference in HRQOL as assessed by FACT-GP, between participants who had been diagnosed with cancer and those who had not

Summary

Introduction

During the last decades there has been an increasing trend in clinical studies to use patient reported outcomes (PROs) in addition to clinical outcomes. Health-related quality of life (HRQOL) is a commonly used PRO, where HRQOL is commonly. The instrument Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy – General (FACT-G) was developed in 1987 and the first validation study was published in 1993 [9]. FACT-G, together with the disease-specific subscales, are referred as the FACT-instruments. Many studies have used disease-specific instruments, such as the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy (FACT), when studying health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in patients. Few studies have described normative HRQOL values in the general population using FACT - General Population (FACT-GP). The general aim of the present study is to describe the normative HRQOL values in the general Swedish population by using the FACT-GP instrument and to investigate to what degree sociodemographic factors and status of self-rated health (SRH) correlate with HRQOL

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