ESTRO 2024 - Abstract Book

S1248

Clinical - Head & neck

ESTRO 2024

1109

Digital Poster

Reduced HR-QoL in patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma and mild versus no comorbidity

Thitikorn Nuamek 1 , Isabella Fornacon-Wood 1,2 , Kate Garcez 1 , Christopher Hughes 1 , Lip Wai Lee 1 , David Thomson 1,2 , Corinne Faivre-Finn 1,2 , Janelle Yorke 3,4 , James Price 1,2 1 The Christie NHS Foundation Trust, Department of Clinical Oncology, Manchester, United Kingdom. 2 The University of Manchester, Division of Cancer Sciences, Manchester, United Kingdom. 3 The Christie NHS Foundation Trust, Christie Patient Centred Research, Manchester, United Kingdom. 4 The University of Manchester, Division of Nursing, Midwifery, and Social Work, Manchester, United Kingdom

Purpose/Objective:

Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) is strongly associated with smoking and alcohol consumption, which also represent major risk factors for other medical conditions and comorbidities. Severe comorbidity has a noticeable impact on health-related quality of life (HR-QoL); however, the influence of prevalent, mild comorbidity (e.g., well-controlled hypertension, diabetes on oral medication) on HR-QoL is unclear in patients considered for radiotherapy treatment. The emergence of electronic patient-reported outcome measures (ePROMs) enables patients to report their symptoms and HR-QoL via online questionnaires. This study assessed whether, for patients with HNSCC, mild comorbidity affects HR-QoL scores from pre-radiotherapy ePROM data.

Material/Methods:

Baseline HR-QoL data were retrospectively retrieved from pre-radiotherapy ePROMs completed by patients with non-metastatic HNSCC between February 2019 and July 2022 as part of routine clinical care. ePROM questionnaires include the EuroQol EQ-5D- 5L tool, measuring patients’ HR -QoL across five domains: mobility, self-care, usual activities, pain/discomfort, and anxiety/depression. Each domain is scored on a 1-to-5 scale (1 – no problems, 5 – extreme problems). Baseline patient data and clinical variables, including Adult Comorbidity Evaluation-27 (ACE-27) comorbidity score, were also collected. ACE-27 considers the severity of decompensation attributable to each co existing disease and categorises comorbidities into three levels (1 – mild, 2 – moderate, and 3 – severe). Patients were divided into two groups based on their ACE-27 score (0 vs 1). Patients reporting problems within each EQ-5D-5L domain (i.e., a score > 1) were compared across ACE-27 score groups using the Chi-squared test and corrected for multiple comparisons using the Benjamini-Hochberg procedure. Ordinal regression was conducted to investigate the association between ACE-27 scores and the reported severity of each EQ-5D-5L domain.

Results: