Quality of life of breast cancer patients in the course of adjuvant radiotherapy

Abstract

In cancer patients, there is an ongoing interest in evaluating the impact of therapeutic interventions on health-related quality of life (hrqol). However, only a few longitudinal studies are published being able to measure the influence of therapy for the patients' quality of life. Based on these data, our aim was to evaluate changes of hrqol during the course of adjuvant radiotherapy in breast cancer patients with special focus on subgroup analysis. Sixty-one women undergoing radiotherapy after breast conserving surgery were asked to answer the EORTC Quality of life questionnaire (EORTC-QOL-C30) three times: at the beginning of radiotherapy, in the forth week and 6 weeks after the end of treatment. To identify patients with changes of their qol during the observation time, the function scale "Global health status/Quality of life" was used enabling us to classify three subgroups: (1) unchanged hrqol (NC), (2) increasing hrqol (INC), (3) decreasing of hrqol (DEC). Patients with an increasing hrqol (N = 25) demonstrated a significant increase in the role as well as in the emotional functioning scales. In patients with a decreasing hrqol (N = 15), no changes in any of the function scales were found, while a significant decrease in their cognitive functioning was observed in patients with no change in hrqol (N = 21). Although the interpretation of these data is difficult because only a few data are available to compare our results, it could be demonstrated that emotional support and the ability to maintain a daily routine in additionally irradiated breast cancer patients is important to optimise hrqol. If hrqol decreases during the course of radiotherapy, the function scales of the EORTC-QOL-C30 seem to be insensitive to reflect this decrease.