
“I was keen to go on a clinical trial. I wanted to try new cancer treatments and hopefully help future generations.”
This study looked at how treatments affected the quality of life of people with cancer.
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) consider how a treatment affects when deciding if it should be available to people in England and Wales. So it is important to have the best information possible.
Researchers wanted to identify a way of finding out how treatment affected a person’s quality of life. In this study, they asked people who had breast cancer to fill in questionnaires at their routine clinic hospital appointments.
The aim of the study was to find out if it would be possible to do a large study looking at how cancer treatments affect quality of life.
The study team found that it was possible to collect information about peoples’ quality of life from routine clinic appointments at the hospital.
This study recruited 79 people who were having treatment for breast cancer at Weston Park Hospital in Sheffield or Clatterbridge Cancer Centre in the Wirral. Most of the people the researchers asked to join the study did so.
Of the 79 people who joined the study, 78 were having chemotherapy and 1 person was having hormone therapy.
Each person filled in a short questionnaire about how their cancer treatment had affected their quality of life. The questions asked if their treatment caused:
Doctors were also asked to fill in a short questionnaire about the stage of the disease, treatment offered and the response of the treatment.
The study team concluded that it was possible to collect high quality information about quality of life from patients at routine clinical appointments.
However, it was not possible for doctors to report accurately on the response of the treatment because additional diagnostic tests would need to be carried out and these were not routinely done.
This was only a small study and the researchers couldn’t draw any firm conclusions about effects of treatments on quality of life. They stated that to do this, a study with a larger number of people was needed as well as additional diagnostic tests to determine how patients were responding to treatments.
We have based this summary on information from the team who ran the trial. As far as we are aware, the information they sent us has not been reviewed independently () or published in a medical journal yet. The figures we quote above were provided by the trial team. We have not analysed the data ourselves.
Please note: In order to join a trial you will need to discuss it with your doctor, unless otherwise specified.
Professor Simon Dixon
Clatterbridge Cancer Centre NHS Foundation Trust
NIHR Clinical Research Network: Cancer
National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE)
Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
University of Sheffield
Freephone 0808 800 4040
“I was keen to go on a clinical trial. I wanted to try new cancer treatments and hopefully help future generations.”