Abstract
BackgroundTo investigate the impact of physician-assessed late toxicities on patient-reported quality of life (QoL) for nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) patients with long-term survival.MethodsA cross-sectional survey of QoL and late toxicities was conducted in 242 NPC patients with disease-free survival of more than 5 years after treatment. The QoL was assessed by the European Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire (EORTC QLQ-C30). Late toxicities including neuropathy, hearing loss, dysphagia, xerostomia, and neck fibrosis were recorded based on the criteria of Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events version 4.0 (CTCAE v.4.0). The general linear model multiple analysis of variance (GLM-MANOVA) was performed to predict factors associated with the QoL.ResultsIn the multifactor model of GLM-MANOVA, of the five late toxicities of CTCAE scales, neuropathy, hearing loss, and xerostomia were observed to be significantly associated with the overall outcome of the fifteen QLQ-C30 scales. A statistically significant trend (p <0.05) was observed, indicating that NPC survivors with more severe neuropathy, hearing loss or xerostomia had a worse outcome on global QoL, all five functional scales, and a variety of symptomatic scales.ConclusionsTo improve QoL outcome for NPC survivors, the development of a modern radiotherapeutic technique should not only focus on reduction of the dose to the salivary glands, but also on anatomical structures that are involved in neuropathy and hearing loss.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1471-2407-14-856) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
To investigate the impact of physician-assessed late toxicities on patient-reported quality of life (QoL) for nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) patients with long-term survival
We focused on NPC patients with long-term survival
We investigated the impact of the severity of late toxicities, which was graded by physicians based on Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events (CTCAE) v.4.0, and on the QoL outcome, which was patient-reported by using the EORTC QLQ-C30
Summary
To investigate the impact of physician-assessed late toxicities on patient-reported quality of life (QoL) for nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) patients with long-term survival. With the advent of the treatment technique of radiotherapy (RT) or a combination of chemotherapy, NPC patients have a greater chance of living cancer free for an extended period of time. If the individual organ receives the radiation dose above the specific dosetolerance limit, the so called late complications, which are usually chronic, irreversible and progressive, would be induced [1]. Assessments of these sequelae were usually from the physicians’ point of view and measured according to physical outcome.
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