P-248 Quality of life among Tunisian gastrointestinal cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy

Abstract

The impact of disease and treatment on gastrointestinal (GI) cancer patients’ well-being is a topic of growing interest. The aim of our study was to assess the quality of life (QoL) among GI cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy and to evaluate the association between the QoL and demographic and clinical characteristics. We conducted an exploratory survey using the QLQ-C30 between February and April 2019. We included all cancer patients, all stages and under treatment. Global health, functional scales, and symptoms of GI cancer patients were then compared through the Student’s t-test or the Mann-Whitney after testing the normality of the distribution. We included 40 GI cancer patients among 131 patients who responded to the questionnaire. Twenty-three patients had colon cancer, eight patients had rectal cancer, five patients had stomach cancer, two patients had pancreatic cancer and two patients had cholangiocarcinoma. The mean age of GI cancer patients was 54.5 years (SD=11.9). GI cancer patients were male in 52.5% and had recurrent or metastatic disease in 45%. Among all cancer patients, GI cancer patients had worse physical functioning (p=0.04) and less appetite (p=0.029). Female GI cancer patients were more likely to have altered physical functioning (p=0.005), nausea and vomiting (p=0.044), pain (p=0.006) and insomnia (0.036). GI cancer patients over 55 years old had worse role functioning (p=0.02) and those who were married had better cognitive functioning (p=0.024). Fatigue was significantly important among patients receiving one to three cycles of chemotherapy compared with 4 to 6 cycles (p=0.005). The metastatic disease did not affect scales in our study. We found a correlation between QoL and age, gender and social status. Fatigue reduced significantly in patients after 3 cycles of chemotherapy.