New article in Transplant International: Evaluating Symptom Burden in Kidney Transplant Recipients

We are pleased to announce that our paper titled Evaluating Symptom Burden in Kidney Transplant Recipients: Validation of the Revised Edmonton Symptom Assessment System for Kidney Transplant Recipients has been accepted into the Transplant International.

The Revised Edmonton Symptom Assessment System asks questions about symptoms many Kidney Transplant Recipients experience and finds important such as pain, fatigue, anxiety and depression. The Revised Edmonton Symptom Assessment System is used to help monitor symptoms in other patient populations such as patients with Cancer and we believe that it may also be useful to monitor symptoms in Kidney Transplant Recipients as well.

Before using the Revised Edmonton Symptom Assessment System in Kidney Transplant Recipients, the validity of using the questionnaire must be assessed. A similar exercise was done to assess the validity of the Revised Edmonton Symptom Assessment System in patients on dialysis showing good validity.

Distributions of non-zero scores for individual ESAS-r symptoms.

This paper adds to our knowledge on how useful the Revised Edmonton Symptom Assessment System may be for patients with kidney disease. This paper looked into how appropriate the Revised Edmonton Symptom Assessment System is as a tool to be used for Kidney Transplant Recipients to help monitor and assess the symptoms they experience.

We found that the Revised Edmonton Symptom Assessment System had good statistical properties to support its potential use in Kidney Transplant Recipients.

**Figure S1A.**
Distribution of ESAS-r Individual item scores and domain scores. ESAS-r individual items include nausea, lack of appetite, shortness of breath, depression, anxiety, and wellbeing. Domain scores included the Global Symptom Distress score which includes all 9 symptoms, the ESAS-r Physical Distress Score which includes 6 items (fatigue, pain, nausea, shortness of breath, lack of appetite and drowsiness) and the ESAS-r Emotional Symptom Distress Score which includes 2 items (depression and anxiety).

We hope to continue our research into assessing how appropriate different questionnaires are to help healthcare providers monitor, assess, and respond to patients’ symptoms.

Abbreviations: ESAS-r, Edmonton Symptom Assessment System Revised

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