Patient-Reported Outcome Measures Used in Randomized Controlled Trials Following Surgical Intervention for Endometriosis: A Structured Review from the AAGL Practice Guidelines Group

Abstract

ObjectiveNo consensus currently exists regarding patient-reported outcome measure (PROMs) instruments. This structured review was conducted to identify the PROMs used by randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that evaluated surgical treatment in patients with endometriosis. Data sourcesTwo parallel searches were conducted by a medical librarian using Ovid Medline, Ovid Embase, and Cochrane Library for RCTs published from 2000 to July 2022. One search focused on studies reporting quality of life (QoL), and the second search focused on studies reporting pain and sexual, bowel, and bladder function. Method of study selectionDuring the title and abstract screening and reference check, 600 results were identified on PROMs relating to QoL and 465 studies on PROMs relating to pain, and sexual, bowel and/or bladder function, and an evaluation of 17 and 12 studies conducted, respectively. The inclusion criteria involved selecting randomized controlled trials that focused on surgical intervention and assessing QoL, pain, and sexual, bowel and/or bladder function using patient-reported outcome measures. Tabulation, integration & resultsCovidence software was used to organize and identify duplicate articles through screening. We developed a data extraction form to collect key information about each included study, as well as the pertinent PROMs used in the study. Assessment of the risk of bias of each study was also performed. A total of 19 studies were identified involving 2089 participants and a total of 16 PROMs used across the studies. 9/19 (47%) of studies were rated as having a low risk of bias. There were no high-risk studies identified in this review. ConclusionThis study identified a large number of RCTs in surgical treatment of endometriosis that used various PROMs to assess QoL, pain, bladder, bowel and sexual function. The PROMs used by high-quality RCTs for QoL include EHP-30, EHP-5, SF-36, SF-12, EQ-5D; for bowel-related symptoms KESS, GIQLI and CCIS/Wexner; for bladder-related function BFLUTS, IPSS, PISQ- 12 and USP; and finally for sexual function, PISQ-12 and SAQ. Unlike other domains, only one tool (Visual Analogue Scale; VAS) was the dominant PROM used for the assessment of pain. Additionally, the use of more than one PROM in each study to assess different aspects of patient's health and pain symptoms did not become prevalent until after 2015.