Patient-Reported Symptom Monitoring Aids Cancer Treatment Outcomes

FRIDAY, Feb. 14, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Electronic symptom monitoring with patient-reported outcomes (PRO) meaningfully improves clinical outcomes for cancer treatment, according to a study published online Feb. 7 in Nature Medicine.

Ethan Basch, M.D., from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and colleagues assessed whether symptom monitoring with electronic PRO improves clinical outcomes during cancer treatment. The analysis included 1,191 enrolled patients seen at 52 oncology practices who were randomly assigned to PRO or usual care.

The researchers found no difference in survival. However, with PRO, time to first emergency visit was significantly prolonged versus usual care, with a 6.1 percent reduction in the cumulative incidence of emergency visits and fewer mean visits at 12 months with PRO (1.02 versus 1.30). PRO was also significantly favored for delayed deterioration of physical function (median, 12.6 versus 8.5 months), symptoms (12.7 versus 9.9) and health-related quality of life (15.6 versus 12.2), which remained significant when considering deaths in analyses. More than three-quarters of patients (77 percent) felt that PRO improved discussions with the care team, while 84.0 percent said it made them feel more in control of their care (84.0 percent) and 91.4 percent would recommend it to other patients. The vast majority completed weekly symptom surveys (91.5 percent).

“These findings demonstrate that symptom monitoring with PRO meaningfully improves clinical outcomes, the patient experience, and utilization of services and should be included as a standard part of quality cancer clinical care,” the authors write.

Several authors disclosed ties to the pharmaceutical industry.

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