Performance Tuning :: DECODE In WHERE CLAUSE Performance?

The following query gets input parameter from the Front End application, which User queries to get Reports.There are many drop down boxes like LOB, FAMILY, BRAND etc., The user may or may not select values from drop down boxes.

If the user select any one or more values ( against each drop down box) it has to fetch all matching values from DB. If the user does'nt select any values it has to fetch all the records, in this case application will send a value 'DEFAULT' (which is not a value in DB ) so that the DB will fetch all the records.

For getting this I wrote a query like below using DECODE, which colleague suggested that will hamper performance.From the below query all the variables V_ are defined in procedure which gets the values selected by user as a comma separated string here V_SELLOB and LOB_DESC is column in DB.

DECODE (V_SELLOB, 'DEFAULT', V_SELLOB, LOB_DESC) IN
OPEN v_refcursor FOR
SELECT /*+ FULL(a) PARALLEL(a, 5) */
*
FROM items a
WHERE a.sku_status = 'A'

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