A study to assess the quality of life among patients with high grade non-muscle invasive carcinoma urinary bladder receiving immunotherapy

Abstract

Background: Urinary bladder lesions are a great health concern as it lies among the top ten most common cancers in the world. These range from benign, harmless lesions that do not recur to life-threatening tumors. The present study was undertaken to assess the quality of life among patients with high-grade non-muscle invasive carcinoma of the urinary bladder receiving immunotherapy. Methods: A hospital-based experimental study was conducted in the Department of General Surgery of Sri Guru Ramdas Institute of Medical Sciences and Research, Amritsar from April 2021 to July 2022. To examine the Quality of Life of 60 patients before and after immunotherapy, the WHOQOL-BREF tool was employed. The participants were followed for a total of six months, with two follow-ups carried out at intervals of three months each. Results: The pre-test physical scores (20.70±8.66) were substantially lower than the other domains. At three and six months, the psychological scores were 21.93±8.51 and 49.37±12.27 respectively, while social scores were 23.93±12.16 and 49.15±24.09 correspondingly. Environment scores (p=0.45) showed no significant difference between groups after BCG treatment. Conclusions: It was vivid that the negative effects of NMIBC on QOL are most pronounced in the physical realm. Quality of life for those with high-grade NMIBC who had BCG treatment improved significantly across all dimensions except the environment. The quality of life of high-grade NMIBC patients was not affected by any of the socio-demographic characteristics except for education and occupational status.