Patient-reported outcomes in clinical trials

Abstract

Patient-reported outcomes (PROs) are progressively being included in clinical trials to provide information about treatment benefits identified by the patients themselves that extend the data on traditional clinical trial endpoints, such as disease free survival, overall survival, progression-free survival, and response rate. PROs may have a greater impact for patients than other endpoints. For example, patients may be prepared to forgo some increase in progression-free survival in return for reduced treatment-related toxicity. PROs may also be an indicator of disease response and have value as prognostic factors. This article discusses the way PROs can be defined and incorporated into clinical trials to enhance the value of clinical trials data and improve the understanding of the clinical benefits of a specific treatment, not only for health care professionals, but for patients and caregivers. The importance and relevance of a patient-centered perspective and shared decision making in defining value and determining treatment benefit is increasingly recognized. However, despite the acknowledged value of PROs, their inclusion in clinical trials remains far from ideal. New guidelines from the research community and technological improvements in data collection and analytics will increase the quality and the importance of PROs as standard methods for the evaluation of medical studies and in the drugs approval process.