Skip Navigation

JNCI Monographs 2007 2007(37):16-21; doi:10.1093/jncimonographs/lgm005
This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrow Request Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Cleeland, C. S.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Cleeland, C. S.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press.

Symptom Burden: Multiple Symptoms and Their Impact as Patient-Reported Outcomes

Charles S. Cleeland

Affiliation of author: Department of Symptom Research, The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX

Correspondence to: Charles S. Cleeland, PhD, Department of Symptom Research, The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, 1515 Holcombe Blvd, Unit 221, Houston, TX 77030 (e-mail: ccleeland{at}mdanderson.org)

Cancer and its treatment produce multiple symptoms that significantly distress patients and impair function. Symptoms caused by treatment may delay treatment or lead to premature treatment termination, and residual treatment-related symptoms often complicate posttreatment rehabilitation. When treatment is no longer possible, symptom control becomes the focus of cancer care. Patient ratings of symptom severity and impact are important patient-reported outcomes (PROs) in cancer clinical trials and comprise a subset of a larger domain of PROs generally referred to as health-related quality of life (HRQOL). Symptoms rarely occur in isolation; rather, there is now ample evidence that symptoms frequently occur in clusters. The impact of these multiple symptoms upon the patient can be described as "symptom burden," a concept that encompasses both the severity of the symptoms and the patient's perception of the impact of the symptoms. The distress caused by symptoms is a subject of much investigation, and several validated measures of the severity and impact of multiple symptoms are now available. Symptom measures are generally brief, thereby reducing respondent burden, and can be administered repeatedly during a trial to give a relatively fine-grained picture of the patient's status across time. In many instances, information on trial-related changes in symptom burden, or comparison of symptom burden between arms in a clinical trial, may provide sufficient self-report data for clinical trial consumers (patients, clinicians, and regulators) to make treatment choices or to evaluate new therapies, without measuring other HRQOL domains.


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?


This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
 J Natl Cancer Inst MonogrHome page
P. A. Ganz and P. J. Goodwin
Health-Related Quality of Life Measurement in Symptom Management Trials
J Natl Cancer Inst Monographs, October 1, 2007; 2007(37): 47 - 52.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]


Disclaimer:
Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.