Pain and quality of life in breast cancer patients

Abstract

OBJECTIVE:To evaluate the influence of pain on quality of life in breast cancer patients.METHODS:A cross-sectional study of 400 patients, including 118 without metastasis, 160 with loco-regional metastasis and 122 with distant metastasis. The instruments used were the European Organization for Research and Treatment for Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire-Core 30 and the Breast Cancer-specific 23 and short McGill Pain Questionnaire.RESULTS:In total, 71.7% of patients reported pain. The most frequent sensory descriptor used by patients was ‘jumping.’ In the evaluative dimension, the main descriptor chosen was troublesome. The Global Health self-assessment showed pain to be inversely correlated with quality of life: the group without metastasis had a mean score of 55.3 (SD=24.8) for those in pain, which rose to 69.7 (SD=19.2) for those without pain (p=0.001). Subjects with loco-regional metastasis had score of 59.1 (SD=21.3) when in pain, and those without pain had a significantly higher score of 72.4 (SD=18.6) (p<0.001). Patients from the distant metastasis group showed similar results with a mean score of 48.6 (SD=23.1) for those in pain and 67.6 (SD=20.4) for those without pain (p=0.002). Regarding the association of pain intensity and quality of life, patients with distant metastasis and intense pain had the worst scores for quality of life with a functional scale mean of 49.9 (SD=17.3) (p<0.009), a Symptom Scale score of 50.0 (SD=20.1) (p<0.001) and a Global Health Scale score of 39.7 (SD=24.7) (p<0.006).CONCLUSIONS:Pain compromises the quality of life of patients with breast cancer, particularly those with advanced stages of the disease.

Reliability, validity, and sensitivity of the Chinese Short‐Form 36 Health Survey version 2 (SF‐36v2) in women with breast cancer

“…Furthermore, the hypothesized item‐scale correlations were higher than the alternatives, indicating that the items in the diverse scales measured distinct aspects of HRQoL; this supports the discriminant validity of the SF‐36v2. Related previous studies obtained comparable results with the same scales …”

“…The ceiling effect in the BP scale suggests that bodily pain was not a major physical problem among patients in this study; however, this finding would need further confirmation. Previous related studies with samples of patients with breast cancer have shown that pain is still a major influencing factor during treatment and rehabilitation process in breast cancer patient populations . Replicating this finding would help confirm whether the BP scale can adequately capture the full range of physical pain responses and detect changes in bodily pain over the time since diagnosis and the treatment process.…”

Real-world patient-reported outcomes of women receiving initial endocrine-based therapy for HR+/HER2− advanced breast cancer in five European countries

“…In our cohort, BPI "worst pain" was moderate/severe for 42% of patients, and "pain interference" was moderate/severe for 80% of patients. Increased pain severity has been associated with a worse HRQoL or health status in patients with advanced breast cancer [14,40,45]. However, patient-reported pain/discomfort was not an independent predictor of HRQoL in our regression analysis despite a high proportion (~70%) of the EU5 patients in our analysis reporting some/ extreme problems in the EQ-5D-3L domain of pain/discomfort.…”

Health-Related Quality of Life among Egyptian Female Breast Cancer Patients at the National Cancer Institute, Cairo University

“…Pain was associated with lower FWB and the total quality of life scores compared to other symptoms (p=0.036, for both). Costa et al, (2017) conducted a study to evaluate the influence of pain on QoL in BC patients and concluded that pain compromises the QoL of BC patients, particularly those with advanced stages of the disease.…”