Oral symptom assessment tools in patients with advanced cancer: a scoping review

PURPOSE: Oral symptoms are common in patients with advanced cancer. The aim of this scoping review was to identify oral symptom assessment tools that have been specifically utilised in patients with “advanced cancer”. METHODS: The review was conducted/reported according to international guidelines for undertaking scoping reviews. PubMed, Embase, and CINAHL were searched for articles involving adult patients with advanced cancer, which involved assessment of ≥ 2 oral symptoms, and which involved patients with > 1 type of cancer. RESULTS: The review identified four validated symptom assessment scales, including one cancer-specific quality of life scale (EORTC QLQ OH-15), one generic tool for assessing the “social impact” of specific oral problems (OHIP), one cancer-specific generic symptom assessment scale (MSAS), and one cancer-specific oral symptom assessment scale (OSAS). CONCLUSION: Symptom assessment tools can facilitate good symptom control in clinical practice, and are an integral component of clinical research. The review identified four validated symptom assessment scales that could be utilised to assess oral symptoms in patients with advanced cancer. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00520-022-07169-1.