A Challenge of joining the EORTC Quality of Life Group from Japan

Abstract

In cancer clinical trials, we have evaluated the efficacy and safety of the treatment objectively from the medical researcher's point of view. However, the importance of patient-reported treatment evaluations have been focused in recent cancer clinical trials. There are a lot of patient-reported questionnaires known as health related quality of life (HRQOL) measures. EORTC QLQ-C30 and other disease specific questionnaires like QLQ-HN35 are the ones of typical HRQOL measures. These questionnaires have been already validated and translated into Japanese. Thus, these questionnaires are often used for HR-QOL measurement in global cancer clinical trials. However, HR-QOL may be affected by treatment-related symptoms as well as physical, psychological and social functioning. Thus, present EORTC QLQ-C30 and other modules may not correctly reflect the HRQOL of Japanese patients. So we have joined EORTC Quality of Life Group (EORTC-QOLG) since 2013 and contributed to the clinical trials for development of QLQ-HN43 for head and neck cancer and THY47 for thyroid cancer. We believe that the participation in the development of HR-QOL measurement in EORTC QOLG from Japan will lead to the precise evaluation of HR-QOL of Japanese cancer patients.