Association of quality of life with disease characteristics and treatment outcomes in patients with advanced gastric cancer: Exploratory analysis of RAINBOW and REGARD phase III trials

Inadequate understanding of interpretation of quality of life (QoL) instruments leads to unsatisfactory data reporting and clinical decision-making, including in gastric cancer care. Pooled QoL data from two phase III studies of ramucirumab with or without paclitaxel in previously treated patients with gastric or gastroesophageal junction cancer were used to explore associations with clinical attributes, including tumour response, disease measurability and performance status (PS). The European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) Quality-of-Life Questionnaire (QLQ)-C30 was used in both studies. Changes in QLQ-C30 scores from baseline to week 6 as a predictor of clinical outcomes and impacts of changes in clinical status on QoL were estimated by multivariate logistic regression and analyses of variance, respectively. Baseline QoL data were available for 989 patients. Fatigue, pain and appetite loss were prominent baseline symptoms. Disease progression resulted in worse QoL in all functional scales (p