Interpreting European Organisation for Research and Treatment for Cancer Quality of life Questionnaire core 30 scores as minimally importantly different for patients with malignant melanoma

Abstract

Introduction: Health-related quality of life (HRQOL) is increasingly recognised as an important end-point in cancer clinical trials. The concept of minimally important difference (MID) enables interpreting differences and changes in HRQOL scores in terms of clinical meaningfulness. We aimed to estimate MIDs for interpreting group-level change of European Organisation for Research and Treatment for Cancer Quality of life Questionnaire core 30 (EORTC QLQ-C30) scores in patients with malignant melanoma. Methods: Data were pooled from three published melanoma phase III trials. Anchors relying on clinician's ratings, e.g. performance status, were selected using correlation strength and

Health-related quality of life results from the IFM 2009 trial: treatment with lenalidomide, bortezomib, and dexamethasone in transplant-eligible patients with newly diagnosed multiple myeloma

“…Changes from baseline were estimated for all time points and were considered clinically meaningful if the magnitude of changes exceeded the minimally important difference (MID) threshold of 10 points or greater for both QLQ-C30 and QLQ-MY20, selected based on the findings from previous studies [21,22].…”

Minimally important differences for interpreting European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire Core 30 scores in patients with head and neck cancer

“…It is acknowledged that interpreting HRQOL data merely through statistical significance might be misleading since small mean differences can be statistically significant, even when the differences are not clinically relevant. Thus, the minimally important difference (MID) approach is important for interpreting HRQOL data as clinically meaningful 3‐8 . MID can be defined as the smallest change in an HRQOL score that is perceived as “important” by a patient or by a third party (eg, an informed proxy or a clinician), which may indicate a change in the patient's management 3 …”

The Impact of the Timing of Health-Related Quality of Life Assessments on the Actual Results in Glioma Patients: A Randomized Prospective Study

“…The choice of a clinically relevant difference, i.e., ≥10 points on a scale, may also have impacted our results. Although this value is universally accepted as a clinically meaningful change and used in cancer clinical trials, recent research has shown that this value may be different for different cancers and may not be applicable to changes on the individual patient level [ 25 , 26 , 27 ]. More appropriately defined clinically relevant differences may therefore be useful in both clinical trials and practice, when evaluating the impact of treatment over time.…”