Prognostic value of baseline EORTC QLQ-C30 scores for overall survival across 46 clinical trials covering 17 cancer types: a validation study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background A pooled data analysis by Quinten et al. (2009) found three European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire Core 30 (EORTC QLQ-C30) health-related quality of life (HRQoL) scales to be prognostic for survival: physical functioning, pain and appetite loss. This study aims to replicate these findings in an independent data set comprising a broader cancer population. Methods Data were obtained from 46 clinical trials across three cancer research networks conducted between 1996 and 2013 that assessed HRQoL using the EORTC QLQ-C30. A stratified Cox proportional hazards model was employed to assess the prognostic significance of baseline QLQ-C30 scale scores on overall survival, adjusting for socio-demographic and clinical variables. Stepwise model selection was done at 5% significance level. Model stability and prognostic accuracy were evaluated via bootstrapping and the C index respectively. Findings Data from 16,210 patients reporting HRQoL at baseline, spanning 17 cancer types, was used. The stratified multivariable model confirmed that better physical functioning (hazard ratio [HR], 0.94; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.93–0.96), lower pain (HR, 1.02; 95% CI, 1.01–1.03), and appetite loss (HR, 1.04; 95% CI, 1.03–1.05) were significantly associated with survival. Additionally, global health status/QoL, dyspnoea, emotional and cognitive functioning were found to be prognostic for survival. This final model, encompassing sociodemographic, clinical, and HRQoL variables, achieved a corrected C index of 0.74, marking a 48% enhancement in discriminatory ability. Bootstrap evaluation indicated no major instability issues. Interpretation These results support previous findings that baseline physical functioning, pain, and appetite loss scores, along with four other scales from the EORTC QLQ-C30, predict survival in cancer patients. Funding EORTC Quality of Life Group.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.019 | 0.035 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 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 teacher head, 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".