Quality of life instruments for patients with peripherally inserted vascular access devices: A scoping review

To identify studies that assess the quality of life of people with a peripheral intravenous catheter (PIVC), a midline catheter (MC) and a peripheral insertion central catheter (PICC).

Using a scoping review design we included studies that reported the quality of life of adult patients with the aforementioned vascular access devices. With a specific keyword search strategy performed in December 2023 we searched, CINAHL, Embase, Cochrane, Scopus and ProQuest databases. There were no restrictions on the date of publication and studies in English, Spanish or Portuguese were included. Following our inclusion an exclusion criteria, extracted findings reported with the patterns, advances, gaps, evidence for practice and research framework.

Of 6317 sources we included 151 papers for full text screening and included 21 studies for data extraction and interpretation. PICCs were the primary catheter reported in seven studies. All remaining studies included more than one device. The most frequently used questionnaire was European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire Core 30 (eight studies) followed by the Short Form Health Survey, the Karnofsky scale, Functional Living Index-Cancer questionnaire, Palliative Care Outcome Scale FACT-B questionnaire. In eight studies a researcher developed without validated questions were used alone or combined with other validated instruments.

There are no validated questionnaires measuring patient quality of life with specifically for three of the most commonly inserted vascular access devices used in healthcare to date. Opportunities exist to develop and validate a patient related and catheter device specific quality of life instrument.