Are chemotherapy-associated symptoms underestimated? A view beyond common toxicity criteria

Development and preliminary testing of a brief clinical tool to enable daily monitoring of chemotherapy toxicity: The Daily Chemotherapy Toxicity self-Assessment Questionnaire

“…Its brevity, short timeframe for recall and embedded symptom descriptors make it appropriate for everyday use by patients receiving inpatient or outpatient chemotherapy to enable close and accurate symptom monitoring by the clinical team. As such, the DCTAQ can be seen as a means to mitigate current expressed concerns about the quality of chemotherapy toxicity assessments in clinical practice(Beijers, Mols, Van Den Hurk, & Vreugdenhil, 2016).Our findings support the content validity, feasibility/acceptability and stability of the DCTAQ in assessing chemotherapy toxicity in this sample of patients with breast or colorectal cancer. Content validity was maximised by capturing the perspectives of both patients and clinicians, in line with current literature that considers patient and clinician involvement as a key component in the development process to enhance the quality, applicability and acceptability of a PRO measure(Staniszewska et al, 2012), and to "ensure that the product has a coherent fit with the care process" (p. 1143)(Richardson, Medina, Brown, & Sitzia, 2007).…”

“…Its brevity, short timeframe for recall and embedded symptom descriptors make it appropriate for everyday use by patients receiving inpatient or outpatient chemotherapy to enable close and accurate symptom monitoring by the clinical team. As such, the DCTAQ can be seen as a means to mitigate current expressed concerns about the quality of chemotherapy toxicity assessments in clinical practice (Beijers, Mols, Van Den Hurk, & Vreugdenhil, ).…”

“…To this direction, Beijers et al. () recognised the absence of a fit‐for‐purpose tool. DCTAQ seems to address this gap, and further research is warranted to examine whether such index score might be a useful addition in clinical practice.…”

“…Recently, Beijers et al (2016) proposed clinical use of an index to quantify the "burden of treatment" and allow clinicians to make prompt decisions, for example, about modifying the chemotherapy protocol. Their view was that burden of treatment is expressed as a composite score that takes into account the number and severity of chemotherapy toxicity as well as the number of days between chemotherapy cycles that patients experienced said toxicity.…”

“…Their view was that burden of treatment is expressed as a composite score that takes into account the number and severity of chemotherapy toxicity as well as the number of days between chemotherapy cycles that patients experienced said toxicity. To this direction, Beijers et al (2016) recognised the absence of a fit-forpurpose tool. DCTAQ seems to address this gap, and further research is warranted to examine whether such index score might be a useful addition in clinical practice.…”