Assessing patient goal attainment before and after pulmonary rehabilitation: a call for measurement development and assessment

<bold>Background:</bold> Patients’ goal attainment has been defined as a core outcome to be measured in pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) of COPD patients. However, it is unknown which measurement instrument is more suitable to assess patients’ goals before and after PR. <bold>Methods:</bold> A systematic review was conducted in 2 steps following the COnsensus-based Standards for the selection of health Measurement INstruments: 1) identification of all patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) used to assess goal attainment in COPD patients after any intervention; 2) a review of the psychometric properties of the identified PROMs. Pubmed, Science Direct and Scopus databases were searched using the PICO strategy and a PubMed search filter designed for identifying studies on measurement properties. Exclusion criteria comprised qualitative studies and unpublished work. Record screening was performed by SS-M and GR. <bold>Results:</bold> 374 records were retrieved in Step 1 and after duplicate removal and full-text screening, one article was retrieved. The Goal Attainment Scaling (GAS) was identified as a measure for assessing patient goal attainment after a pharmacological intervention. Step 2 of the systematic review retrieved no studies on psychometric properties of the GAS. <bold>Conclusion:</bold> Patient goal attainment should be measured before and after PR to ensure the delivery of a patient-centered intervention. However, PROMs have been rarely developed or studied for this purpose. Future studies should evaluate the psychometric properties of GAS for its use in the context of PR, or develop a new instrument, if needed.