Key Takeaways
1. Quality of life belongs at the top. Because CKD reduces patients' quality of life and trials frequently omit patient-reported outcomes, the set placed health-related quality of life in its essential tier alongside kidney function.
2. Adoption is not automatic. Uptake of prior CKD outcome sets has been poor; embedding this one requires publication, conference dissemination, endorsement from funders and professional bodies, and inclusion in guidelines and trial protocols.
3. Pharmacists can drive uptake. Pharmacists can champion the set through their networks, apply its outcomes in the CKD services they run, and generate evidence that the outcomes are feasible and clinically relevant to measure.
In an interview with Pharmacy Times, Ashkon Ardavani, PharmD, PhD, a research associate at the University of Leicester whose PhD investigated the role of the pharmacist in managing chronic kidney disease (CKD), discussed why health-related quality of life reached his researched core outcome set’s essential tier and what will be required for the set to be adopted in trials and practice.
Ardavani explained that many outcomes measured in studies do not reflect what is relevant from the patient's perspective. Outcomes important to patients are often not measured, and patient-reported outcomes such as health-related quality of life are frequently omitted. He noted that quality of life captures the impact of both the treatment and the condition on a patient's well-being and that people living with CKD have a reduced quality of life compared with those who do not have the disease. The measure has also rated highly among people with multiple long-term conditions, including CKD—reasoning the group felt it belonged alongside hard clinical measures such as kidney function at the top level.
Turning to adoption, Ardavani acknowledged that uptake of past CKD outcome sets has been poor and outlined what needs to happen. The findings should be published in a peer-reviewed journal, disseminated at relevant conferences, and shared with nephrology and pharmacy organizations. Beyond that, the set needs recognition and endorsement from funders and professional organizations and inclusion in guidelines, reporting guidance, and trial protocols.
Pharmacists, he said, have a direct role. They can raise awareness of the set through their research and professional networks, incorporate its outcomes into the CKD services in which they provide interventions, and build evidence showing those outcomes are feasible to measure, clinically relevant, and useful for informing pharmacist interventions. In practice, that means treating the set not as an academic exercise but as a tool pharmacists actively carry into clinical CKD work.
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