Objective: Understanding immunity from the patient’s perspective is essential for optimizing cancer treatment and improving patient-reported outcomes. Currently, there are no established self-reported scales designed to assess immune vulnerability in cancer populations. We aimed to fill this gap by developing a brief scale fit for this purpose. Methods: We developed a five-item brief perceived immune vulnerability (PIV) scale and conducted a two-phase study on cancer survivors in China. In Phase 1, we assessed the reliability and factor structure of the PIV scale, while in Phase 2, we evaluated its construct validity by comparing it with measures of overall well-being and various patient characteristics. Results: Between October and December 2022, 100 patients completed Phase 1, while 1275 patients were enrolled in Phase 2. The mean age of the participants was 68.7 years (SD 10.3); 892 (64.9%) patients were female, and 537 (40.3%) patients had at least high-school education. In Phase 1, Cronbach’s α = 0.913, indicating good internal consistency. We identified one component with an eigenvalue of 3.72, explaining 70.17% of the variance. In Phase 2, patients reporting poor well-being had worse immune function (Pearsonr= 0.202,p< 0.001). Additionally, patients undergoing active cancer treatment had worse immune function than those receiving survivorship care (p= 0.024). Meanwhile, patients with stage III/IV disease had worse immune function than those with stage I/II disease (p= 0.041). Conclusions: The PIV scale is a reliable and valid tool for assessing immune vulnerability in patients with cancer and preliminarily offers a convenient approach to monitoring and evaluating their self-reported immunity. Further research is needed to explore the broader utility of this instrument.
目的：从患者视角理解免疫功能对于优化癌症治疗及改善患者报告结局至关重要。目前尚无专门用于评估癌症人群免疫脆弱性的成熟自评量表。本研究旨在开发适用于此目的的简明量表以填补该空白。方法：我们开发了包含五个条目的简明感知免疫脆弱性量表，并针对中国癌症幸存者开展了两阶段研究。第一阶段评估了该量表的信度与因子结构，第二阶段通过与总体健康状况及多种患者特征的测量指标进行比较，评估其结构效度。结果：2022年10月至12月期间，100名患者完成第一阶段研究，1275名患者参与第二阶段研究。参与者平均年龄68.7岁（标准差10.3）；892名（64.9%）患者为女性，537名（40.3%）患者具有高中及以上学历。第一阶段研究显示克朗巴赫α系数为0.913，表明量表具有良好内部一致性。我们提取出一个特征值为3.72的因子，可解释70.17%的变异量。第二阶段研究发现，自述健康状况较差的患者免疫功能更差（皮尔逊相关系数=0.202，p<0.001）。此外，接受积极癌症治疗的患者比接受生存期照护的患者免疫功能更差（p=0.024）。同时，III/IV期疾病患者的免疫功能较I/II期患者更差（p=0.041）。结论：PIV量表是评估癌症患者免疫脆弱性的可靠有效工具，初步为监测和评估患者自报免疫功能提供了便捷方法。未来需进一步研究探索该工具的广泛适用性。
肿瘤(癌症)患者之家