Do Our Patient Surveys Actually Pick Up PICC Problems? Testing EQ5D-5L and AHPEQS in Real Patients

Study Overview

PICC complications like infection, thrombosis, occlusion and other failures don’t just affect clinical outcomes, they change how patients feel and function day to day. This study asked a practical question: are common patient questionnaires actually sensitive enough to detect when a patient has had a PICC complication?

Researchers conducted a secondary analysis using data from two large randomised trials in Queensland, Australia. They looked at whether a general health outcome tool (EQ5D-5L) and a patient experience tool (AHPEQS) could discriminate between patients who did and didn’t experience PICC failure outcomes.

Key Findings

• EQ5D-5L struggled to detect specific serious complications
  • It did not clearly distinguish patients with CLABSI or thrombosis from those without these complications.
• EQ5D-5L did pick up overall PICC complications
  • Patients with any PICC complication had worse overall health utility and self-rated health scores.
• AHPEQS didn’t perform well as a full tool
  • Most AHPEQS items showed little ability to distinguish complication groups.
• One AHPEQS question stood out
  • The item about unexpected harm or distress (physical and/or emotional) was consistently linked with complications, including all-cause PICC complications, CLABSI and thrombosis.

Implications

This study highlights a key gap in how we measure PICC impact: generic surveys may be too blunt for specific complications, even when those events are clinically significant. EQ5D-5L looks moderately useful for capturing the broader impact of “any PICC complication,” but it may miss the signal for rarer, high-impact events like CLABSI or thrombosis.

For researchers and services wanting to improve patient-centred care, the take-home is clear: we likely need more PICC-specific outcome and experience measures, or at least a targeted set of questions that reliably capture harm, function, and distress related to PICCs.

Read more:https://doi.org/10.1007/s11136-026-04264-2

Authors: Emily N. Larsen; Amanda J. Ullman; Nicole Marsh; Ruth Royle; Mari Takashima; Deanne August; Penny Comans Inglis; Nicole Gavin; Amanda Corley; Brighid Scanlon; Doreen Tapsall; Raymond J. Chan; Claire M. Rickard; Joshua Byrnes