Spots Global Cancer Trial Database for Cancer End Of Life Evaluation

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Trial Identification

Brief Title: Cancer End Of Life Evaluation

Official Title: Evaluation and Validation of Quality Of Life Scales in Palliative Advanced Cancer

Study ID: NCT01545921

Conditions

Advanced Cancer

Interventions

Quality Of Life questionnaires completion

Study Description

Brief Summary: The aim of this study is to culturally adapt and to validate Quality Of Life tools dedicated to the end of life for French cancer patients.

Detailed Description: French clinical research in palliative care is confronted with a lack of tools allowing to estimate in a standardized way a patient related outcome. Scales used today are not specifically adapted to quality of life (QoL) at the end of life patient evaluation. So all the relative dimensions to this disease stage are not estimated. What establishes a brake in the improvement of a quality support. The dimensions of pain, psychological distress, fatigue, decrease of the autonomy are essential points estimated in "classic" questionnaires and frequently used at the palliative disease stage. However the end of life also recovers the domains of the spirituality, oneself's completion, relationship. These elements are essential to dread better QoL at end of life, but are not or do not little approach on the French questionnaires. The Missoula-Vitas Quality Of Life Index is a questionnaire developed by Byock, Merriman and Kinzbrunner and specifically designed for palliative situations \[I. Byock, 1998\]. This QoL tool provides an exhaustive assessment of important dimensions in this setting. The short version is composed of 15 items and asks patients to evaluate 5 dimensions: symptoms, function, interpersonal relationships, well-being and transcendence \[I. Byock, 1998\]. Another tool, the QUAL-E, is longer with 25 items concerning 5 domains: life completion, relations with the health care system, preparation for end of life, symptom severity and affective social support \[KE. Steinhauser, 2002\]. However, these QoL tools have not been translated and adapted to French. Another concern is that the lack of specificity for cancer patients. The first step to improve evaluation of how French patients feel about this phase of their disease is to translate these specific end of life QoL tools. Assessing QoL at the end of life with dedicated tools could help to compare therapeutic strategies and could result in improvements in palliative care.