The Patient Concerns Inventory in head and neck oncology: a structured review of its development, validation and clinical implications.

Introduction: The Patient Concerns Inventory (PCI) is a condition specific prompt list that was initially developed for head and neck cancer (HNC) and is referred to as the PCI-HN. There have been numerous publications regarding the PCI-HN, since it was first published in 2009. To date, there has not been a review of its development, validation and clinical implications. A collation of relevant papers into key sections allows multidisciplinary teams and researchers to have an overview of the PCI-HN's background, evaluation and utility. This is essential if colleagues are to have confidence in the tool and be able to reflect on how to optimise its use in clinical practice.

Methods: Five search engines were used: EMBASE, Medline, PubMed, CINAHL and Handle-on-QOL for the specific term 'Patient Concerns Inventory' up to and including 1st February 2022. In addition, an accumulation of PCI-HN data of 507 HNC patients was drawn from previous studies in Liverpool and Leeds between 2007 and 2020 and was analysed specifically for this paper.

Results: 54 papers relating to the PCI-HN were identified. The review is structured into eight sections: (1) What is the PCI-HN and how does it work; (2) Feasibility and acceptability; (3) Psychometrics; (4) Items selected and frequency (5) Associations with Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQOL) and casemix; (6) Other observational studies; (7) Randomised trial evaluation; (8) General discussion and further research.

Conclusions: As the term PCI is quite ubiquitous and produces many hits when searching the literature, this review provides a very concise and convenient historical context for the PCI-HN and collates the current literature.