Enabling Symptom Identification and Tracking in Children Receiving Cancer Treatment

Refinement and Early Evaluation of SPARK, an Approach to Enable Symptom Screening and Monitoring by Children Receiving Cancer Treatments

Children with cancer and hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT) recipients suffer from severe and bothersome symptoms because treatments are intense. So, the investigators developed SPARK (Supportive care Prioritization, Assessment and Recommendations for Kids), a website devoted to helping children track symptoms and providing a way to let doctors and nurses know which symptoms are bothersome. This study will examine the likelihood that children will complete SPARK once daily, help the investigators figure out how to improve the website so that children will use it, and help the investigators plan the large scale trial to test its efficacy in improving quality of life (QoL).

Participants will be children with cancer or HSCT recipients who are 8-18 years of age and who are expected to be in hospital or in clinic daily for 5 days.To determine the feasibility of a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of symptom feedback to healthcare providers

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Quality of Life; Pediatric Cancer; Symptom Screening
• Intervention / Treatment: Other: Symptom feedback to Health Care Provider; Other: Standard of care

Detailed Description

Methods: Participants will be children with cancer or HSCT recipients who are 8-18 years of age and who can understand English, and who are expected to be in hospital or in clinic daily for 5 days.

SPARK RCT will be a pilot multi-center RCT in which we will randomize children to either undergo daily symptom screening for 5 days with symptom reports provided to the healthcare team or standard of care. Feasibility will be met if at least 30 participants are enrolled within one year and at least 75% complete at least 60% of evaluations.

Quality of the Idea Children receiving cancer treatment have excellent survival outcomes, in part, related to the provision of intensive therapies. Unfortunately, most children suffer and experience severe and bothersome treatment-related symptoms. Symptoms not only impact on QoL and morbidity but, in addition, may negatively influence future psychosocial functioning.

Symptoms remain unaddressed even during healthcare encounters because children do not complain and clinicians fail to ask about them. We recently developed SSPedi, a pediatric-specific symptom screening tool on an iPad. SSPedi, however, consists only of the questions which ask about symptoms. SPARK is the web-based application which will facilitate access to SSPedi, encourage symptom screening, generate reports and allow children to track their symptoms. Careful thought to design is required to ensure SPARK optimizes future use and has clinical utility. The proposed project output is a product that facilitates longitudinal symptom screening and provides the groundwork for a future RCT of symptom feedback.

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 30
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• Canada
  • Ontario
    • Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5G 1X8
      • The Hospital For SickKids

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 8 years to 18 years (ADULT, CHILD)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No
• Genders Eligible for Study: All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• We will include children with cancer and HSCT recipients who are 8-18 years of age at enrollment and who can understand English.
• Participants may be inpatients or outpatients, and may be actively receiving cancer treatment or may have completed treatment.

Exclusion Criteria:

• Exclusion criteria will be illness severity, cognitive disability, or visual impairment that precludes utilization of SPARK according to the healthcare team.

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: SUPPORTIVE_CARE
• Allocation: RANDOMIZED
• Interventional Model: PARALLEL
• Masking: NONE

Number of Arms

2

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
ACTIVE_COMPARATOR: Symptom feedback to Health Care Provider; For those randomized to the intervention arm, symptom screening using SPARK will be completed once daily for 5 days on an iPad using the approach refined in aim 2. Daily SSPedi reports will be printed and provided in the patient chart. On days 1 and 3±1, a report describing symptoms that are "a lot" or "extremely" bothersome will be emailed to the physician providing direct medical care	Other: Symptom feedback to Health Care Provider; These children will complete SPARK daily for 5 days in a row, daily symptom reports will be printed and provided in the patient chart. On days 1 and 3, a report describing symptoms that are "a lot" or "extremely" bothersome will be emailed to the physician providing direct medical
ACTIVE_COMPARATOR: Standard of care; For those randomized to the control arm, a clinical research associate will visit the participant on days 1 and 5±1 and will obtain SSPedi scores on an iPad. Reports will not be printed or emailed to the physician.	Other: Standard of care; A clinical research associate will visit the participant on days 1 and 5±1 and will obtain SSPedi scores on an iPad. Reports will not be printed or emailed to the physician.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Feasibility of an RCT of symptom feedback to healthcare providers versus standard of care	Will be determined by both the number of patients who are recruited for this study, and the number of patients who complete at least 60% of evaluations. We will aim to enroll 30 participants at SickKids over one year. Outcome feasibility will be met if at least 30 participants are enrolled within one year and at least 75% complete at least 60% of evaluations	Study will be enrolling for 1 year with a goal to enroll 30 participants. Feasibility will be determined once all 30 participants have completed the study after 1 year

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Pediatric Quality of Life (Peds QL) Cancer Module Acute Version	Measures self-reported symptoms related to cancer treatment, capturing physical, psychological and cognitive health. 5-point likert scale ranging from 0(almost never) to 4 (almost always); there is no weighting of items. Scores are transformed on a scale from 0 to 100. Items are reversed scored and linearly transformed to a 0-100 scale as follows: 0=100, 1=75, 2=50, 3=25, 4=0. Mean score is calculated= Sum of the items over the number of items answered. Total Score is used and calculated by: Sum of all the items over the number of items answered on all the Scales. Higher scores indicate lower problems.	Measure will be completed by participant on day 5±1 day.
Symptom Screening in Pediatrics (SSPedi)	Self-reported symptom screening questionnaire asking pediatric patients (age 8-18) how bothered they are by 15 identified symptoms and side effects of cancer treatment. This 5-point Likert scale score from 0 (not bothered at all) to 4 (extremely bothered), and has a total score ranging from 0-60, with a higher number indicating more bother cancer-related symptoms. Likert scores will be summed for a total score that ranges from 0 (none) to 60 (worst possible).	Those randomized to the intervention arm measure will be completed by participant every day for 5 days. Those randomized to control arm measure will be completed by participant on Days 1 and 5±1 day.
Faces Pain Scale Revised	The Faces Pain Scale Revised is a self-report measure of pain intensity developed for children to score the sensation of pain on the 0-to-10 metric. The scale shows a close linear relationship with visual analog pain scale, counting left to right; 0" = "no pain" and "10" = "very much pain	Measure will be completed on day 5±1 day.

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: The Hospital for Sick Children
• Collaborators: Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (ACTUAL): July 2, 2018
• Primary Completion (ACTUAL): November 16, 2018
• Study Completion (ACTUAL): December 31, 2019

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: February 20, 2018
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: April 4, 2018
• First Posted (ACTUAL): April 12, 2018

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (ACTUAL): February 4, 2021
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: February 3, 2021
• Last Verified: February 1, 2021

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Keywords: Cancer; Quality of Life; Children; Randomized Control Trial; Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation
• Other Study ID Numbers: REB #1000053137

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No