Health-related quality of life in lung cancer patients: validation of a national version of EORTC QLQ-LC29 questionnaire

Abstract

Introduction: European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) quality of life questionnaire (QLQ) is integrated system for assessing health-related quality of life (HRQL) of lung cancer (LC) patients participating in clinical trials. EORTC developed QLQ-instrument for cancer patients (QLQ-C30) and LC-specific (QLQ-LC13) that assesses specific LC symptoms/treatments. Aim: To validate national versions of EORTC LC-specific questionnaires. Methods: Patients completed instruments before/after LC surgery (24 hours, 15 days and 30 days). Internal reliability (Cronbach’s α)+Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) sampling adequacy ratio were used. Areas under receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves estimated discriminating value. Statistical analyses were made using R 3.5.2 (standard, rcmdr, EZR, scoring.QLQLC29, scoring.QLQLC13, scoring.QLQL30 packages). Results: 51 patients completed questionnaires with high compliance rates. Homogeneity of questionnaires showed high correlation with total scale. ROC (Figure 1) showed no significative differences between questionnaires (p=0.862). KMO ratio (Figure 2) was 0.7477 (QLQ-C30), 0.863 (QLQ-LC29), 0.8793 (QLQ-LC13). Reliability (Cronbach’s α) reaches 0.5988 (QLQ-C30), 0.8755 (QLQ-LC29), 0.8020 (QLQ-LC13). Conclusion: EORTC questionnaires are reliable and valid for HRQL evaluation in LC patients and can be widely employed in national clinical studies.