Quality of Life of Bulgarian Breast Cancer Female Patients

Abstract

BACKGROUND: During recent years, breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer and the leading cause of cancer death in females worldwide and in Bulgaria as well. The issues of satisfactory individual quality of life (QoL) after treatment represent undoubted interest and contribute to the elaboration and implementation of specific assessment questionnaires and scales. AIM: The objective of the present study was to assess some aspects of the QoL in female patients with breast cancer following successful disease management. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We examined a total of 57 female breast cancer patients operated on between 2018 and 2020 at a mean age of 47.89 ± 6.71 years (range, 30–59 years). They filled in the upper limb lymphoedema QoL questionnaire containing 27 items. RESULTS: There was a significant prevalence of the ductal carcinoma and nonspecific invasive carcinoma, of the luminal B- human epidermal growth factor receptor-2 (HER2) positive and luminal B-HER2 negative breast cancer as well as of grade two of differentiation. The responses with “not at all” dominated concerning the domains of “activities of daily living” and “health-related complaints. There was a great variety of the frequency of different patient’s responses to one and the same question when all 27 questions of all 57 patients were assessed as a whole. There was only one response with suffering “a lot” given to all the four items dealing with health-related complaints. The response with “a little” inclination dominated concerning the psychological dimension. The responses with “a lot” disturbance in terms of three items (“in your emotional life with your partner”, “look at yourself in a mirror” and “in your professional relationships”) considerably prevailed indicating the pronounced unfavourable influence on these patients’ quality of social life exerted by the breast cancer. CONCLUSION: Breast cancer moderately affects individual patient’s QoL following successful treatment. Future research using additional specific questionnaires and focusing on the emotional and social aspects of the QoL could contribute to the improvement of patient’s life characteristics.