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Health Canada reporting on quality of life for oncology drugs
1School of Health Policy and Management, York University, Toronto, Canada; Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada.
Introduction:
Quality of Life (QoL) information regarding oncology drugs is important for patients, especially those who are receiving treatment for symptom control and not for curative purposes. Health Canada guidance documents do not describe how QoL information should be reported. This study examines how Health Canada reports QoL in documents regarding the decision to approve and indications for new oncology drugs.
Methods:
A list of all oncology drugs approved by Health Canada from 2019 to 2023 was created using a Health Canada website. Documents describing why a decision was made to approve a new drug and how QoL influenced indications for the drug were searched for the term "Quality of Life" and relevant passages were recorded verbatim.
Results:
Health Canada approved 60 oncology drugs. QoL only influenced approval in 1 case and was only mentioned in a drug's indication in 3 cases.
Conclusion:
Health Canada only reports QoL information very infrequently for oncology drugs.
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