Quality of life assessment in routine care for prostate cancer

FCMHW PROGRAM: Quality of life assessment in routine care for prostate cancer.

Contact: Dr Norma Bulamu

Overview:

Key issues impacting on quality of life (QoL) such as symptoms, screening and treatment preferences, early identification of complications and recurrences, comorbidities and financial impact of the disease, has the capacity to improve clinical outcomes and prostate cancer related survival for men.

Despite this, routine QoL assessment is not part of standard of care for men with prostate cancer. This program aims to design, implement and evaluate a framework for incorporating at the start and along the care continuum disease specific and generic QoL assessment into routine clinical care for men prostate cancer. 

Participants will be recruited over 12 months to assess QoL, out of pocket costs and health service utilisation. Data will be collected for different groups of men such as those from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, in order to inform the design of culturally sensitive interventions. Additional retrospective data will be sourced from the South Australian Prostate Cancer Registry (SA-PCOCC) database. 

These data will inform subsequent health economic decision analytic modelling and discrete choice experiment methodology to formally compare inclusion of routine QoL assessment against usual care for men with prostate cancer with QoL, satisfaction and clinical and survival as outcomes.