A new symptom measure in gastrointestinal stomal tumors.

e17508 Background: Symptom burden is the combined impact of disease- and treatment-related symptoms on daily functioning. A major barrier to effective symptom management in gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST) is inadequate assessment. Our aim was to develop a short, valid, reliable patient-reported outcome measure of GIST symptoms for research and practice. Methods: After giving IRB-approved informed consent, 110 patients with GIST completed the 13 symptom severity and 6 interference items of the core MD Anderson Symptom Inventory (MDASI) plus 9 GIST-specific symptom items generated from patient and expert input. Items were measured on a 0-10 scale (0 = none, 10 = worst imaginable). 65 patients completed the same items 1 day later. Patients also answered a single overall quality-of-life (QOL) question. Demographic and disease information was collected on all patients. Psychometric procedures determined reliability and validity of the MDASI-GIST. Results: Mean subject age was 59.2 years (standard deviat...