Gender differences in health-related quality of life among patients with colorectal cancer

Abstract

Background: Evidence has shown that colorectal cancer (CRC) survivors, especially women have a lower health-related quality of life (HRQOL). This study aimed to assess the QOL of CRC survivors as well as gender-related differences in the QOL of CRC patients in Northwest of Iran. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted in East Azarbijaban. All patients aged ≥18 years, and diagnosed with CRC regardless of its stage and plans for treatment, and also referred to teaching hospitals within a two years' time frame of 2014-2016, were included in this study. The Persian version of the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire (EORTC QLQ-C30) was completed for each patient by two trained interviewers. Student t-test and χ 2 test were used to analyze Gender differences among patients, clinical-epidemiological characteristics, as well as the scores of QLQ-C30 dimensions. Multiple linear regression models were used to assess the relationship between the score of the EORTC QLQ-C30 questionnaire and gender. Results: Overall 303 patients (167 male, 136 female) with a diagnosis of CRC were included in the study. The mean age of participants was 58.16±13.58 years. The mean scores of physical (b=−14.80, P=0.001) and social functioning (b=−9.14, P=0.038) of women with CRC were more negatively affected than men with CRC. In addition, women had a higher mean score in pain (b=10.74, P=0.022) and fatigue (b=12.53, P=0.007) symptom subscales in comparison to men. Based on the results of multivariate linear regression analysis, gender, occupation, and adjuvant therapy can be considered as the independent and strong predictor factors of functional scale in our CRC patients. Conclusions: Women appear to be more affected than men by impaired physical and social functioning after the development of cancer, and they reported more fatigue and pain than men. Therefore, it might be advisable to consider strategies to improve the HRQOL in women.

Quality of life among newly admitted patients to cancer hospital in Vietnam and associated factors

“…Gender was also a factor related to the quality of life in cancer patients, as we found the emotional functioning score among females was lower than males. This share similar result to previous studies conducting on patients at different stages (Laghousi et al, 2019;Schmidt et al, 2005;West et al, 2015). Also, identical to our study, other research in Vietnam (Ngoc Thi Dang et al, 2019;Tran et al, 2019) and other countries (Jacob et al, 2019;Roick et al, 2019) have suggested that financial burden is associated with lower quality of life in cancer patients.…”

Symptom burden in transplant-ineligible patients with newly diagnosed multiple myeloma: a population-based cohort study

“…Females compared to males had a higher symptom burden for nearly all recorded symptoms in our study similar to previous reported literature in oncology which also noted sex differences in symptom burden and quality of life. 7,8 Additionally, although increased co-morbidities has been previously shown to be correlated with a higher symptoms burden, 9 we did not detect a statistically significant relationship in our retrospective study and future prospective studies are needed for further investigation. Non-teaching hospital was associated with higher rates of pain and depression and although the exact reason cannot be determined from our data, clinical outcomes are known to be different among teaching versus non-teaching sites.…”

A global, regional, and national survey on burden and Quality of Care Index (QCI) of hematologic malignancies; global burden of disease systematic analysis 1990–2017

“…These findings could be explained by the following reasons: (1) compared with developed areas, women with cancer have a lower priority in developing regions, which demonstrates inequality in cancer care. (2) It has been revealed that women generally have higher pain perception compared with men, which could inform health-care clinicians to make decisions in order to improve women’s quality of care [ 53 , 54 ]. In addition, for all hematologic cancers, standardized mortality and incidence rates have been detected to be higher in men.…”