Understanding the impact of palliative and ablative radiotherapy on Health-Related Quality of Life in patients with poor prognosis metastatic disease

Kimya Ghaffarian

Kimya Ghaffarin received the Breakthrough Cancer Summer Scholarship, enabling her to conduct research under the supervision of Prof. Aisling Barry at University College Cork during the summer.

Radiotherapy is a safe and effective treatment option for patients with incurable cancer who may have debilitating symptoms such as pain or bleeding related to their disease. Unfortunately due to a lack of awareness of its benefits and a perception that radiotherapy can cause worsening of symptoms, it is underutilized.

As with any treatment, it is important to assess the impact of that treatment on a person’s quality of life. To date, there is no quality-of-life data on Irish patients with incurable disease receiving radiotherapy. Therefore we are unable to compare our treatment to international standards or ensure it is truly benefiting our patients.

This study aims to use a smartphone application platform called ONCOpatient®  to fill this knowledge gap and collect data on how radiotherapy impacts a patient’s health-related quality of life. This platform will allow us to facilitate the collection of data remotely, saving patients who are often very sick and their caregivers from making repeated trips to the hospital to complete questionnaires.

Using this data, we aim to help healthcare practitioners identify patients who may benefit most from treatment, assess resource availability, and provide information to support treatment decision-making.