• Nemica Thavarajah, Gillian Bedard, Liying Zhang, David Cella, Jennifer L Beaumont, May Tsao, Elizabeth Barnes, Cyril Danjoux, Arjun Sahgal, Hany Soliman, and Edward Chow.
• Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
• Support Care Cancer. 2014 Apr 1; 22 (4): 1017-28.

ObjectiveThis study aimed to test the reliability, psychometric, and clinical validity of the use of the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy--Brain (FACT-Br) in patients with brain metastases.MethodsPatients with brain metastases were interviewed using the FACT-Br (including the FACT-general) 1 week prior to treatment. All patients completed a follow-up assessment 1 month post-treatment. Patients with a good performance status and receiving stereotactic radiosurgery completed an additional 1 week follow-up assessment after the initial baseline interview to assess test-retest reliability.ResultsForty patients had complete 1 month follow-up data. Ten of these patients also completed the 1 week follow-up assessment from baseline. The median Karnofsky performance status of patients was 80 and the median age was 64 years. All subscales of the FACT-Br were found to be conceptually related (except for two correlations) using the following subscales: physical well-being (PWB), social/family well-being (SWB), emotional well-being (EWB), functional well-being (FWB), FACT-G total score, brain cancer subscale (BrC), and the FACT-Br total score. All FACT-Br scores demonstrated excellent reliability, except for the SWB scale which revealed good reliability. The FACT-Br scores showed no significant change in the quality of life (QoL) of patients from baseline to 1 month follow-up.ConclusionThe use of the combined FACT-G and FACT-Br Subscale to assess QoL specifically in patients with brain metastases has successfully undergone psychometric validation. Future clinical trials should use the FACT-G and FACT-Br Subscale to assess QoL in this patient population.

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