Patient-Reported Outcomes in Liver Cancer Trials: A Scoping Review of 64 RCTs

A scoping review of 64 randomized controlled trials involving 8,494 participants, evaluating the reporting quality of patient-reported outcomes in liver cancer treatments. The review, authored by Lu Ren and published on figshare in 2026, systematically searched six databases for RCTs of targeted therapy and/or immunotherapy published from inception to April 2025. It assessed reporting quality using the CONSORT-PRO extension and CONSORT 2010 guidelines.

Use Cases

• Benchmarking reporting quality of patient-reported outcomes in oncology trials based on the CONSORT-PRO adherence scores.
• Analyzing the frequency of specific symptom reporting in cancer trials based on the mention of eight symptomatic adverse events.
• Identifying commonly used patient-reported outcome measures in liver cancer research based on the reported use of 27 PROMs across 17 domains.
• Comparing methodological rigor between confirmatory and exploratory study designs based on the reported mean CONSORT-PRO scores.

Strengths

• Systematic review methodology covering six databases and 64 RCTs with 8,494 participants.
• Provides specific quantitative findings, such as 23.4% of RCTs reporting PROs as a primary outcome and mean CONSORT-PRO adherence scores for different study types.
• Clear focus on a standardized quality assessment using the CONSORT-PRO extension and CONSORT 2010 guidelines.

Limitations

• The underlying data (the 64 RCTs) are not included; the file is a review document summarizing findings.
• Row and column structure of the original trial data is unknown, limiting direct analysis.
• Scope is limited to a specific medical domain (liver cancer treatments) and publication languages (English or Chinese).

Provenance

Source

figshare

Collection Method

Systematic search of six electronic databases for relevant RCTs, followed by scoping review and quality assessment.

Time Range

Inception to April 17, 2025

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-13 04:45:02