Abstract
To observe the quality of life (QOL) in rectal cancer patients with permanent colostomy in different periods after operation. A 1-,3-,6-month prospective study of QOL in 51 rectal cancer patients with permanent colostomy and 50 without permanent colostomy was assessed using European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) QOL-30 and CR38 questionnaires. The variation of QOL in different periods was "v" type. In the 1st postoperative month, these patients had the lowest quality of life scores, accompanied significantly varied functions and severe symptoms. Almost of all indexes of these patients had improved consistently in the postoperative period. The scores of global QOL even better than pre-operative level at 6th months post-operation, but the social function, body image, chemotherapy side effects and financial difficulties had not restored to the baseline level. Patients without permanent colostomy had a better score in most of categories of QOL-30 and CR38. The 1st postoperative month was crucial for patients' recovery, in which we should pay great attention to these problems which relate to the recovery of rectal cancer patients with permanent colostomy.
Highlights
Rectal cancer surgery often resuls in a permanent colostomy, and seriously limited the quality of life of patients for bowel and sexual function[1, 2]
It is important to assess rectal cancer patients’ quality of life to determine whether such impairments disrupt everyday life. Both the cross-sectional and prospective studies of the QOL in rectal cancer patients with permanent colostomy had been shown in some countries with the comprehensive methods which had made reliability, validity and comparable results[3,4,5]
General demographic characteristics There were 51 permanent colostomy patients and 50 ones without permanent colostomy participated in our study in all. permanent colostomy patients (96.08%) and all ones (100.0%) without permanent colostomy completed all the questionnaires
Summary
Rectal cancer surgery often resuls in a permanent colostomy, and seriously limited the quality of life of patients for bowel and sexual function[1, 2]. It is important to assess rectal cancer patients’ quality of life to determine whether such impairments disrupt everyday life. Both the cross-sectional and prospective studies of the QOL in rectal cancer patients with permanent colostomy had been shown in some countries with the comprehensive methods which had made reliability, validity and comparable results[3,4,5].
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