Comprehensive Assessment of the Elderly Cancer Patient: The Feasibility of Self-Report Methodology

Abstract

CGA can be conducted in an outpatient cancer community using a self-report format. Despite the fact that this population varied demographically across age groups and is limited to veterans, this study demonstrated remarkable similarities between younger and older cancer patients in terms of functional status, health states, and quality of life.

"Concordance between comorbidity data from patient self-report interviews and medical record documentation"

“…For these conditions, the gold standard measurement issue remains problematic in most studies for the prediction of patient health outcomes. Several research groups have suggested, however, that the parallel use of comorbidity data collection methods from both sources may be necessary to analyze or predict some types of health outcomes [5,9,11,14,18]. Although the data provided by patients' significant others or the use of carefully worded comorbidity checklists may be subject to response biases, such methods may help prompt increased recall of past or longstanding comorbid conditions to augment providers' hospitalization documentation.…”

“…In the literature, researchers have identified three primary sources for obtaining patient-level comorbidity data: a) administrative diagnosis databases or clinical patient registries,[12,13] b) medical records,[9,10] and c) patient self-reports [11,14-17]. Due to the frequently missing data in many administrative diagnosis databases, experts have suggested that patient medical records may be a more complete source of comorbidity data [2,5,14,16].…”

“…Due to the frequently missing data in many administrative diagnosis databases, experts have suggested that patient medical records may be a more complete source of comorbidity data [2,5,14,16]. …”

“…As an alternative to medical records, patient may be asked about their comorbidities in mailed surveys or individual telephone or face-to-face interviews [9,11,14,21]. The primary difference from medical records is that survey methods result in "unfiltered" self-reports, (e.g.…”

“…self-reports that are not filtered through the additional questioning of healthcare personnel). Researchers have demonstrated patient self-reports to be a generally reliable data source through careful rewordings of more complex individual comorbidity items [9-11,14,17,21]. …”