This core is designed to promote assessment of aging-relevant outcomes, baseline factors and co-factors. The core is intended to help increase the scope of assessment in aging and cancer research and to provide state of the art measurement information. As noted in the Aging and Cancer Workshop Report Priority, """"""""Develop a core set of instruments to assess the quality of life of older cancer patients. An individualized evaluation that includes functional status, activities of daily living, cognitive and emotional functioning, and socioeconomic status would standardize the assessment of older patients across cancer centers"""""""". Increasing knowledge at the cancer and aging interface requires more information about the status and treatment experience of the older adult with cancer. Efficacy in cancer clinical trials has relied heavily on performance status, survival and tumor response. Tolerance is measured by dosage reduction, hematologic status, symptoms and treatment discontinuation. The use of Quality of Life measures in cancer research has increased in the last decade but these measures were not designed with the older cancer patient in mind (240). Many QOL measures continue to be plagued by issues about content, interpretability by clinicians and lay persons, timing of assessment, respondent burden and management of missing data (190). Geriatric measures largely focus on the need to capture domains such as medical, functional, cognitive and affective status (241-244). Many were developed for use in chronic diseases or in well elder populations, not in cancer. Traditional geriatric assessment measures may be time consuming and inefficient (243). Measures to meet the needs of research on the older cancer patient will need to incorporate the priorities and needs of both cancer and aging. There may already be too many measures; the need is to increase familiarity with existing measures, make them accessible for use as trials are designed and to match each trial's goals with the characteristics of specific measures. New measures are needed only if nothing available comes close.
Specific Aims of the Aging and Cancer Measurement Core: 1. to create and continually update a data base of measures relevant to the older cancer patient to be used as a library by investigators at the cancer and aging interface 2. to provide evidence for test characteristics, respondent burden, data collection procedures and instrument interpretation specific to this population. 3. to orient and train investigators and research staff in the use of these measures 4. to participate in national efforts to determine common instruments for use in multisite trials 5. to evaluate the feasibility and timing of assessment in older cancer patients 6. to design and test new measures in areas of need
Showing the most recent 10 out of 47 publications
