Prevalence of self-reported side effects in neuroendocrine tumour patients prescribed somatostatin analogues.

Somatostatin analogues (SSA) are a common treatment for some forms of neuroendocrine tumours (NETs). Patients report a variety of side effects after starting these drugs, so in most cases they require a lot of nutritional input. The authors used an online survey to invite responses from patients worldwide to determine the extent of reported side effects. Patients were asked which SSA they were taking and how they rated the severity of their side effects. They were provided with a list of 11 options to choose from, but not given any guidance or a definition of terms. The most commonly reported side effect was constipation (85%), with 8.6% of these respondents rating its severity as 10/10. The survey found that many self-reported side effects from the use of SSAs were experienced more frequently than previous clinical studies or the patient information leaflets reported. As this was an online survey, so the findings are limited in that first, this was a self-selected sample of patients and second, patients were able to respond more than once.