Patient-centred outcome measures for oncological surgery: a narrative review

Peri-operative medicine is becoming increasingly relevant in the context of managing frail patients with cancer. This paper outlines how demographic shifts in populations are affecting cancer incidence and frailty rates, the relevance this holds to the management of cancer care, and the outcome measures that should be used to gauge best clinical practice to ensure patient-centred care.

A targeted literature review was conducted using the search terms 'surgical oncology', 'outcomes', 'frailty', 'quality of life' and 'end of life' from 10 to 17 June 2024. Articles were reviewed by all authors and core themes from the literature review were identified. Core themes were then discussed by the authors to construct a narrative review.

The review identified several core themes in relation to patient-centred outcome measures for oncological surgery. The UK population is ageing and consequently, the number of older people being diagnosed with cancer is increasing. There is much evidence to show that older patients have poorer outcomes in terms of mortality and postoperative complications across all types and severities of cancer. Traditional outcome measures such as 30-day mortality, duration of stay and recurrence rates fail to capture the outcomes that are most pertinent to this patient cohort. These include patient quality of life and treatment burden. We discuss the measurement of quality of life through the use of patient-reported outcome measures and their limitations. We also highlight the need for patient-centred, holistic care with the use of tools such as comprehensive geriatric assessment, which have been shown to improve patient outcomes.

There is need for a greater emphasis on quality-of-life measures alongside mortality and patient-reported outcome measures. We argue that holistic care approaches should play a greater role in enabling the measurement of outcome states beyond simply dead or alive.