The utilization of telephone follow-up in the advanced cancer population: a review of the literature
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Palliative cancer patients often require clinic or hospital follow-up after any treatment intervention they may have received. This is typically done in person at either a hospital or a clinic. In these advanced cancer patients, this may be burdensome and result in attrition. Telephone follow-up is becoming more frequently used as an adjunct to clinical follow-up. It can be conducted for both clinical trials, as well as interventional purposes. The purpose of this study was to review the literature and examine the utility and effectiveness of telephone follow-up in the advanced cancer population. METHODS: A literature search was conducted on Medline (1980 - April week 4 2012), Embase (1980 - week 17 2012), the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (April 2012) and CINAHL (1981-July 31 2012). RESULTS: A total of 11 studies were identified that were published between 2001 and 2011. All studies were in the clinical trial setting. Studies that utilized telephone follow-up in the advanced cancer population, as well as studies that compared the feasibility of telephone follow-up with hospital follow-up, were included in this review. Follow-up at week 4 (month 1) was the most common interval for patient contact. Information collected during the contact varied with the study; however, the most commonly used tool was the Edmonton Symptom Assessment System. Other information included analgesic diary, patient feedback, satisfaction with the care and post-treatment side effects, along with a variety of quality of life questionnaires. Some studies provided information to the patient about protocols for care, advice and coping strategies. Attrition was common even with the use of telephone contact in place of clinical follow-up. CONCLUSION: Telephone follow-up is a feasible alternative to traditional hospital follow-ups for assessment of symptom palliation. There are fewer burdens on the patient, allowing for a better maintenance of quality of life and lower rates of attrition in clinical trials. Patients had an overall positive opinion of the use of this alternative approach with no common disadvantages. A combination of follow-up strategies, such as clinic follow-up and telephone contact for those not attending, may result in a more comprehensive assessment.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.008 | 0.047 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.011 | 0.014 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".