A Prospective Observational Study on Assessment of Quality of Life of Patients on Adjuvant and Neo-adjuvant Therapy for Lung, Breast, and Colorectal Malignancies

Abstract

Background: Patients with malignancy undergoing chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation therapy experience a variety of symptoms that affect their quality of life (QOL). This necessitate the assessment of QOL on their subjective evidence that can be utilized in diagnosis, predicting prognosis, patient monitoring and clinical decision making. This information will help health care professionals to design interventions and recommend the appropriate treatment, thereby improving the QoL of patients. In this study we aim to assess the QoL of patients receiving adjuvant and neo-adjuvant therapy for Lung, Breast, and Colorectal cancer, in addition to making correlations according to type of treatment and disease stage. Methods: A prospective observational study was carried out in the radiation oncology department from March 2021 to September 2021 in Krishna Rajendra Hospital, Mysuru, India. We used the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer quality of questionnaire [EORTC QLQ – C30] Version 3.0 to assess the QoL of patients. Patients were interviewed twice, when they came to have their chemotherapy regardless of the cycle number and during the next visit. Results: The number of patients enrolled in the study were 107. Most of participants were female 83%. About 73.8% diagnosed with breast cancer. In patients treated with adjuvant versus neo-adjuvant treatment, the functional scores and global health status scores were statistically significant p=0.038 and p=0.010 respectively with mean scores 63.54 in favour of adjuvant therapy. These results represent a better QoL in patients received adjuvant versus neo-adjuvant therapy. The mean values of global health status score in patients diagnosed with lung cancer during the two assessments (47.72, 51.51) were lesser than those in patients diagnosed with breast cancer (63.71,63.50) and colorectal cancer (58.82,58.82), indicating patients with lung cancer had poor QoL compared to breast and colorectal cancer patients. Conclusion: Patients received adjuvant therapy had better QoL compared to those received neo-adjuvant therapy. The QoL in lung cancer patients were majorly affected as compared to QOL in breast and colorectal cancer patients. there is a strong correlation between the type of treatment and disease stage.