This study aimed to develop and test disease specific questionnaires (also known as Patient Reported Outcome Measures or PROMs) for patients in the UK who have been treated with ablation for cardiac arrhythmias. The potential benefits of using PROMs questionnaires include support for clinicians to improve their performance, assisting patients in making informed choices and strengthening audit and research.
Phase 1 of the study completed in January 2013 and included interviews with 25 patients from two sites. Feedback from these interviews together with input from a multidisciplinary team helped us improve drafts of the questionnaires to ensure the questions are fully inclusive and easy to understand. During phase 2 of the study patients were asked to complete a pre-procedure questionnaire relating to their symptoms, quality of life and procedure expectations. They were also sent post-procedure questionnaires relating to procedural outcomes, symptoms and quality of life at 8 to 16 weeks post procedure and at 1 and 5 years post-procedure. The responses obtained from these PROMs were used to ensure that the questionnaires are working accurately and reliably.
Over 550 patients were subsequently enrolled during Phase 2 to complete postal questionnaires during a five year follow up. The Cardiff Cardiac Ablation PROM (C-CAP) has been successfully validated and is freely available to use with versions suitable for pre and post ablation. A number of publications detailing this work are available below.
Withers, K.L., Morgan, H., Lencioni, M. (2022). QOL and PROMS in Catheter Ablation of Cardiac Arrhythmia. In: Athanasiou, T., Darzi, A., Oo, A.Y. (eds) Patient Reported Outcomes and Quality of Life in Cardiovascular Interventions. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09815-4_16
Evans J, Withers K, Lencioni M, Carolan-Rees G, Wood KA, Patrick H, Griffith M. (2019) Health Related Quality of Life Benefits from Ablation Continue at One Year: A longitudinal study using the C-CAP questionnaire and EQ5D. Pacing and Clinical Electrophysiology, 42; 66; 705-711. DOI: 10.1111/pace.13675.
White J, Withers KL, Lencioni M, Carolan-Rees G, Wilkes A, Wood K, Patrick H, Cunningham D, Griffith M. (2015) Cardiff cardiac ablation PROM (C-CAP): a multi-centre validation study of a new questionnaire for patients undergoing catheter ablation for cardiac arrhythmias in the UK. Quality of Life Research, 1-13.
Withers KL, Wood K, Carolan-Rees G, Patrick H, Lencioni M, Griffith M. (2015) Living on a knife edge-the daily struggle of coping with symptomatic cardiac arrhythmias. Health and Quality of Life Outcomes, 13:86-91
Withers KL, Wood K, Carolan-Rees G, Patrick H, Lencioni M, Griffith M. (2015) Establishing content validity in a novel patient reported outcome measure for cardiac arrhythmia ablation patients. Health and Quality of Life Outcomes, 13: 38-44
Withers KL, White J, Carolan-Rees G, Patrick H, Lencioni M, Cunningham D, O’Callaghan P, Murray S, Wood K, Griffith M. (2014) Patient Reported Outcome Measures for Cardiac Ablation Procedures – A Multicentre Pilot to Develop a New Questionnaire. Europace 16 (11): 1626-1633