Comparison of the sensitivities of pharmacotherapy-related and disease-specific quality of life measures in response to pharmacist-led pharmaceutical care for cancer outpatients: a randomised controlled trial

Abstract

Background No data was available regarding the sensitivities of pharmacotherapy-related and disease-specific quality of life measures to pharmacist-led pharmaceutical care (PC). Objective To compare the sensitivities of two health-related quality of life (HRQoL) measures, i.e. the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measure of Pharmaceutical Therapy for Quality of Life (PROMPT-QoL) vs. the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-General (FACT-G), in response to pharmacist-led PC for cancer outpatients. Methods A randomised controlled trial was conducted on the cancer outpatients of a tertiary Thai hospital. Eligible patients were randomly allocated to a PC group receiving PC interventions or a usual care (UC) group acquiring pharmacist’s ordinary care. The HRQoL of both groups was assessed using the PROMPT-QoL and the FACT-G before and after a session. The data were gathered and the sensitivities of the two measures using standardised mean differences (SMDs) were analysed. Results A total of 237 patients in two arms (120 PC vs. 117 UC patients) completed the trial. With PC interventions, all eight PROMPT-QoL domains and 3 out of 4 FACT-G domains were significantly improved. The PROMPT-QoL yielded SMDs ranging from 0.24 to 1.68 that were considered a moderate-to-high sensitivity, whereas the FACT-G provided a moderate sensitivity with SMDs of 0.31–0.64. The average SMDs of four FACT-G domains was 0.50 and SMD of its total score was 0.80. Eight PROMPT-QoL domains had the average SMD of 0.60 and the total score SMD was 1.40. Conclusions The PROMPT-QoL is more sensitive to detect HRQoL when delivering pharmacist-led pharmaceutical care to cancer outpatients. Trial registration TCTR20210809008 on August 9, 2021.