Health-related quality of life indicators and overall quality of life: Results from a cluster analysis on baseline EORTC QLQ-C30 data from 6,739 cancer patients
Bibliographic record
Abstract
e20576 Background: Increasingly randomized controlled trials in cancer research include Health-related Quality of Life (HRQoL) alongside traditional biomedical outcome measures. The majority of these trials focus on a general cancer HRQoL measure. The objective of this meta-analysis was to identify which HRQoL indicators influence a patient's overall quality of life, in order to better understand the changes in such a generic scale. Methods: Retrospective pooling of 29 European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) clinical trials, among 10 cancer sites, yielded baseline EORTC QLQ-C30 data for a total of 6,739 patients. A cluster analysis, using Ward's method, was performed to determine how the 15 HRQoL indicators, and the Global Health scale (GH) in particular, cluster overall and by cancer characteristics. Cronbach's alpha coefficient (α) was used to measure internal consistency. Dendrograms of the HRQoL indicators were plotted for each cancer type. Results: Three main clusters emerged: a physical function related cluster (physical functioning, role functioning, fatigue and pain, α = 0.83), a psychological function related cluster (emotional functioning, cognitive functioning and insomnia, α = 0.64) and a gastrointestinal cluster (nausea and vomiting and appetite loss, α = 0.68). The GH scale was found to be part of the physical function cluster in the overall dataset (α = 0.85). This result was reproduced for both metastatic and non-metastatic patients. When looking across the 10 different cancer sites, the GH scale was mainly linked with a physical component in brain, head and neck, lung, melanoma, ovarian, pancreatic and prostate cancer. However, in breast and testicular cancer, GH was more strongly associated with the emotional scales. Conclusions: This study shows that the GH scale of the EORTC QLQ-C30 is most strongly linked with a patient's physical status. This result is consistent across stage of disease and most cancer sites. The different results seen in patients with breast and testicular cancer deserve additional investigation. No significant financial relationships to disclose.
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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 | 0.020 | 0.028 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.003 | 0.012 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 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".