Pre-diagnosis health-related quality of life, surgery, and survival in women with advanced epithelial ovarian cancer: A SEER-MHOS study

Abstract

Objective Health-related quality of life (HRQOL) has been found to be associated with overall survival in women with ovarian cancer. However, previous studies assessed HRQOL after surgery within clinical trial populations only. The study goal was to determine the association of pre-cancer diagnosis HRQOL with the likelihood of receiving surgery and with overall survival in a national, population-based cohort of older women with advanced ovarian cancer. Methods The Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER)-Medicare Health Outcomes Survey (MHOS) database was queried to identify 374 women aged 65 years and older with advanced stage epithelial ovarian cancer from 1998 to 2011. Responses to the Short Form 36 (SF-36) and Veterans-RAND-12 (VR-12), two single-item global health questions, and Activities of Daily Living (ADLs) were abstracted. Multivariable models were used to quantify associations of HRQOL and ADL assessments with surgery and overall survival, adjusted for demographic and clinical characteristics. Results Of 374 women with a HRQOL assessment prior to diagnosis, 199 (53%) underwent surgery. Increases in physical and mental HRQOL domains were significantly associated with receipt of surgery. The relationship between HRQOL domains and overall survival were not statistically significant. For ADLs, only difficulty in toilet use was significantly associated with survival. Conclusion In this population-based sample of older women with advanced epithelial ovarian cancer, pre-diagnosis HRQOL was predictive of receiving surgery, but not of overall survival.

Disparities in health-related quality of life in women undergoing treatment for advanced ovarian cancer: the role of individual-level and contextual social determinants

“…For women with ovarian cancer, HRQOL is an important outcome both in its own right and because of its association with treatment outcomes [6,27,28]. In GOG 218, a five-point difference in baseline FACT-O TOI score was associated with progression-free survival [29].…”

“…Women undergoing ovarian cancer treatment may have lower health-related quality of life (HRQOL) than other women, particularly for certain subdomains of HRQOL and in the short-term after treatment [3][4][5]. HRQOL is influenced by multiple patient-level factors and has been associated with disease specific ovarian cancer outcomes [6].…”

The German Version of the Veterans Rand – 36/12 Item Health Survey: Translation and Adaptation of a Generic Health Assessment Instrument in a Sample of Inpatient Rehabilitation Patients

“…This patient population has special medical needs, is older, poorer, sicker (with more diseases than veterans nationally) and has a higher percentage of men than the general adult population [12][13][14]. The creation of the VR instruments has been previously documented [13][14][15][16] and has been shown to be valid for the VA population [13,[17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27] as well as other general l US populations [28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35]. The English-language VR instruments have become an integral part of registries [36] and studies of National U.S. health programs [18,[37][38] In this study, we translated and culturally adapted the VR-36 into the German language (Germany) and validated the VR-36 and VR-12 in a population of German patients undergoing inpatient rehabilitation.…”

Low BCL7A expression predicts poor prognosis in ovarian cancer

“…Ovarian cancer is a common gynaecological cancer; its mortality rate ranks first among gynaecological tumours and it poses a serious threat to human life and health [1, 2]. In most cases, ovarian cancer is usually detected in advanced stages, so even with advanced therapeutic strategies, such as targeted therapy, chemoradiotherapy, and combined chemotherapy, the overall 5-year survival rate of ovarian cancer is still poor [3–5].…”