New measure of health‐related quality of life for patients with oropharyngeal mucositis

Abstract

Scaffold‐guided tissue engineering based on synthetic and natural occurring polymers has gained much interest in recent years. In this article, the development of a polysaccharide‐based artificial extracellular matrix (AECM) is reported. Three‐dimensional, macroporous composite AECMs composed of chondroitin sulfate (ChS) and chitosan (Chito) were prepared by an interpolyelectrolyte complex/lyophilization method. The ChS–Chito composite AECMs were crosslinked with glutaraldehyde and calcium ions (Ca2+) and cocrosslinked with N,N‐(3‐dimethylaminopropyl)‐N′‐ethyl carbodiimide (EDC) and N‐hydroxysuccinimide (NHS). The crosslinking reactions were examined with Fourier transform infrared analysis. Glutaraldehyde and Ca2+ crosslinked with Chito and ChS, respectively, to produce different types of ChS–Chito semi‐interpenetrated networks. In contrast, EDC/NHS crosslinked with both Chito and ChS to produce ChS–Chito connected networks. In physiological buffer solutions, the Ca2+‐crosslinked ChS–Chito composite AECMs showed a lower swelling ratio than their EDC/NHS‐ and glutaraldehyde‐crosslinked counterparts. The ChS–Chito composite AECMs showed excellent antibacterial capability and biocompatibility according to the results of the in vitro antibacterial test and cytotoxic assay. This result suggested that the ChS–Chito composite AECMs might be a potential biomaterial for scaffold‐guided tissue‐engineering applications. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2006

A patient-reported outcome instrument to assess the impact of oropharyngeal mucositis on health-related quality of life: a longitudinal psychometric evaluation

“…The OMQoL seems to be a clinically meaningful and scientifically robust HRQOL instrument, which can be completed in 8 min without assistance. Our factor analysis reported in previous literature supported the creation of symptom, diet, social function, and swallowing subscales [3], and these subscales demonstrated excellent construct validity in the current study.…”

“…Missing items are inevitable in any HRQOL measures. Nevertheless, previous validation results showed that the proportion of missing responses per item was low, with 5% of patients missing one item or more [3]. Various statistical approaches exist for dealing with the problem of missing data.…”

“…It would allow oral health states and outcomes of treatments to be evaluated in terms of their relevancy to patients in clinical practice and research studies. The development and preliminary psychometric properties of the OMQoL have been reported elsewhere [3]. The objective of the present study was to further validate the OMQoL by examining its construct validity in relation to clinical and health outcomes.…”

“…Adding the scores on the individual items to yield single final score may also not adequately reflect the multifaceted construct of HRQOL in OM. The OMQoL, an OM-specific HRQOL measure, was recently developed to evaluate the impact of OM [3]. It would allow oral health states and outcomes of treatments to be evaluated in terms of their relevancy to patients in clinical practice and research studies.…”

“…lining of the oral mucosa [1,3,23,26,31]. Despite recent advancements in medical technology, the risk of oropharyngeal mucositis (OM) and the consequent need for costly supportive care remains for oncology patients [8,25].…”