Dr. Cella on Patient-Reported Outcomes in a Clinical Setting

David Cella, PhD, a clinical research specialist and chair of the Department of Medical Social Science at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, discusses that tests, similar to the functional assessment of cancer therapy kidney symptom index-15 (FKSI-15) used in his phase III AXIS trial comparing axitinib to sorafenib as second-line therapy for metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC), are available to clinical use for quality-of-life assessments and are being widely validated. The FKSI-15 test examines 15 areas that were rated as relatively important out of 34 reported symptoms of mRCC.