The feasibility and value of assessing patient-reported outcomes in pulmonary arterial hypertension

Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is a progressive pulmonary vascular disease that negatively impacts health-related quality of life (HRQOL). The PAH-symptoms and impact (PAH-SYMPACT) questionnaire is a validated disease-specific patient-reported outcome (PRO) instrument that assesses a patient's symptoms and the impact of PAH and its treatment on well-being. We performed a single-center prospective cohort study of patients with PAH to determine the feasibility of assessing PROs in clinical practice and to determine the association between PAH-SYMPACT domains and clinical characteristics and outcomes. One hundred and ten patients completed the 1-day version of the PAH-SYMPACT questionnaire which consists of 22 Likert-scale questions that assess HRQOL across four domains: cardiopulmonary (CP) symptoms, cardiovascular (CV) symptoms, physical impact (PI), and cognitive and emotional (CE) impact. Higher scores indicate worse HRQOL. Patients were predominantly female (n = 86, 78%) with a mean age of 57.8 ± 16.2 years. While several patient characteristics were associated with CP and PI domains, few were associated with CV and CE domains. PI and CE impact scores were associated with recent hospitalizations and mortality and CE impact score was independently associated with an increased risk of death after adjustment for disease severity (hazard ratio: 3.29, 95% confidence interval: 1.56–6.91, p = 0.002). In conclusion, the assessment of PROs in clinical practice using the PAH-SYMPACT questionnaire is both feasible and valuable. PAH-SYMPACT scores have independent prognostic value and are not adequately reflected by traditional measures of disease severity. These findings underscore the importance of assessing HRQOL in clinical practice.