Abstract
BackgroundHealth-related quality of life (HRQoL) is gaining importance as a valuable outcome measure in oral cancer area. The aim of this study was to assess the general and oral HRQoL of oral and oropharyngeal cancer patients 6 or more months after treatment and compare them with a population free from this disease.MethodsA cross-sectional study was carried out with patients treated for oral cancer at least 6 months post-treatment and a gender and age group matched control group. HRQoL was measured with the 12-Item Short Form Health Survey (SF-12); oral HRQoL (OHRQoL) was evaluated using the Oral Health Impact Profile (OHIP-14) and the Oral Impacts on Daily Performances (OIDP). Multivariable regression models assessed the association between the outcomes (SF-12, OHIP-14 and OIDP) and the exposure (patients versus controls), adjusting for sex, age, social class, functional tooth units and presence of illness.ResultsFor patients (n = 142) and controls (n = 142), 64.1% were males. The mean age was 65.2 (standard deviation (sd): 12.9) years in patients and 67.5 (sd: 13.7) years in controls. Patients had worse SF-12 Physical Component Summary scores than controls even in fully the adjusted model [β-coefficient = −0.11 (95% CI: −5.12-(−0.16)]. The differences in SF-12 Mental Component Summary were not statistically significant. Regarding OHRQoL patients had 11.63 (95% CI: 6.77-20.01) higher odds for the OHIP-14 and 21.26 (95% CI: 11.54-39.13) higher odds for OIDP of being in a worse category of OHRQoL compared to controls in the fully adjusted model.ConclusionAt least 6 months after treatment, oral cancer patients had worse OHRQoL, worse physical HRQoL and similar psychological HRQoL than the general population.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12955-014-0201-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
Health-related quality of life (HRQoL) is gaining importance as a valuable outcome measure in oral cancer area
Because the oral health-related quality of life (OHRQoL) outcome variables were not normally distributed in our sample, we evaluated the unadjusted and adjusted associations of Oral health impact profile (OHIP-14) and Oral impacts on daily performances (OIDP) with the study group using ordinal multimodal regression models
This study showed that patients treated for oral or oropharyngeal cancer experienced significantly worse physical domains of HRQoL and OHRQoL compared to the general population even after adjusting for the effect of sociodemographic characteristics, oral health and general health
Summary
Health-related quality of life (HRQoL) is gaining importance as a valuable outcome measure in oral cancer area. Improvement in the treatments has resulted in a decrease in mortality [2] and more patients than ever before are living with the sequelaes of the illness [3] These sequelaes could affect their quality of life [4]. Generic questionnaires provide valuable information by interpreting functional status in the broader scope of the patient’s life [5]. As they are not specific for oral cancer, they potentially allow comparisons with populations free from this disease. Due to the complex anatomy of the oral cavity it is desirable to complement generic HRQoL measures with the use of specific oral health-related quality of life (OHRQoL)
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