THE CANCER FUNCTIONAL ASSESSMENT SET (CFAS) CLOSELY REFLECTS THE PHYSICAL- FUNCTION QUALITY OF LIFE OF CHEMOTHERAPY AND RADIOTHERAPY PATIENTS

Abstract

Background The physical function of cancer patients is positively correlated with their quality of life (QOL), and the lower the physical function, the lower the QOL. Various scales measuring physical function are available, but it is unclear which scale best quantifies QOL. We investigated the relationship between QOL and three physical functional scales, i.e., the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group-Performance Status (ECOG-PS), activities of daily living measured by the Barthel index (BI), and the Cancer Functional Assessment Set (cFAS), to determine the degree to which each scale is correlated with QOL and to identify which scale can discriminate a decline in physical- function QOL with high accuracy. Patients and Methods We recruited 61 patients who had undergone chemotherapy or radiotherapy for cancer. After admission, the patients' QOL was self-assessed on the Quality of Life Questionnaire-Core 15-Palliative Care (QLQ-C15-PAL), and the patients' scores on the three physical-function scales were assessed by a physical therapist. The correlations between each scale and the QLQ- C15-PAL were determined, and the scales' accuracy for predicting physical- function QOL was evaluated. Results Among the QLQ-C15-PAL items, the physical-function items had the highest correlation coefficients with the three scales, and the correlation coefficients with the cFAS were the highest. In the receiver operating characteristic curve of the full score of the physical-function QLQ-C15-PAL, the areas under the curve for the cFAS, BI and PS were 85.1% (95% confidence interval, 74.3%–95.9%), 75.8% (64.2%–87.5%), and 81.6% (70.1%–93.1%) with the cut-off values of 89.0 points (sensitivity 0.84, specificity 0.75), 95.0 points (sensitivity 0.64, specificity 0.75) and 1.0 points (sensitivity 0.53, specificity 0.94), respectively. Conclusions Compared to the other scales, the cFAS was highly correlated with the QLQ- C15-PAL and predicted a decline in the physical-function QOL of cancer patients who had undergone chemotherapy or radiotherapy with high accuracy.

Keywords

• physical function
• quality of life
• cancer functional assessment set