Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Sprave, Tanja
• Pfaffenlehner, Michelle
• Stoian, Raluca
• Christofi, Eleni
• Rühle, Alexander
• Zöller, Daniela
• Fabian, Alexander
• Fahrner, Harald
• Binder, Harald
• Schäfer, Henning
• Gkika, Eleni
• Grosu, Anca-Ligia
• Heinemann, Felix
• Nicolay, Nils Henrik

Titel

App-Controlled Treatment Monitoring and Support for Patients With Head and Neck Cancer Undergoing Radiotherapy: Results From a Prospective Randomized Controlled Trial

Ist Teil von

• Journal of medical Internet research, 2023-10, Vol.25 (3), p.e46189-e46189

Ort / Verlag

Toronto: Journal of Medical Internet Research

Erscheinungsjahr

2023

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Applied Social Sciences Index & Abstracts (ASSIA)

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Head and neck cancers (HNCs) are very common malignancies, and treatment often requires multimodal approaches, including radiotherapy and chemotherapy. Patients with HNC often display a high symptom burden, both due to the disease itself and the adverse effects of the multimodal therapy. Close telemonitoring of symptoms and quality of life during the course of treatment may help to identify those patients requiring early medical support. The App-Controlled Treatment Monitoring and Support for Patients With Head and Neck Cancer (APCOT) trial aimed to investigate the feasibility of integrating electronic patient-reported outcomes (ePROs) in the treatment surveillance pathway of patients with HNC during the course of their radiotherapy. Additionally, the influence of app-based ePRO monitoring on global and disease-specific quality of life and patient satisfaction with treatment was assessed. A total of 100 patients were enrolled in this trial, and 93 patients were evaluable. All patients (100%) in the experimental arm answered ≥80% of the ePRO questions during treatment, reaching the predefined threshold for the feasibility of ePRO monitoring (P<.001 in the binomial test). No clinical or patient-specific factor was found to influence feasibility. Global health and most domains of the general quality of life were comparable between trial arms, but an increased HNC-specific symptom burden was reported by patients undergoing ePRO surveillance. ePRO monitoring resulted in improved patient satisfaction regarding interpersonal manners (P=.01), financial aspects (P=.01), and time spent with a doctor (P=.01). This trial demonstrated the feasibility of incorporating daily app-based ePRO surveillance for patients with HNC undergoing radiotherapy. Our data, for the first time, demonstrate that telemonitoring in this setting led to increased reporting of HNC-specific symptom burden and significantly improved several domains of patient satisfaction. Further analyses are needed to assess whether our findings hold true outside the context of a clinical trial.