Quality of Life in Patients with Gynecological Cancers: A Web-Based Study

Abstract

Introduction: Gynecological cancers are common in adult women. One of the most important goals in the management of these patients is to improve quality of life, along with survival as a traditional outcome. The aim of this study was to evaluate quality of life in gynecological cancers in Iran. Methods: This cross-sectional study was performed on a sample of patients with gynecological cancers including uterine, ovarian, cervical, and vulvovaginal attending a teaching hospital affiliated to Tehran University of Medical Sciences between 2014 and 2019. The data was collected by a web-based platform with validated self-administered questionnaires including demographic information, the EORTC QLQ-C30 and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression (HADS). The data were analyzed using appropriate tests. Results: In all 251 patients were studied. The mean age of patients was 52.8±12.4 years and 43% had uterine, 30% had ovarian, 25% had cervical, and 2% had vulvovaginal cancer. The mean global quality of life score as measured by the EORTC QLQ-C30 was 59.8 ± 24.9. Women with ovarian cancer had the highest and women with cervical cancer had the lowest global quality of life score. There were significant differences in emotional, cognitive and global quality of life by cancer diagnosis (p <0.05). Although not significant, overall physical, role, cognitive and social functioning was found to be better in women who had been treated with surgery. The mean anxiety and depression score were 8.7± 5.0 and 7.1 ± 5.2, respectively. Conclusion: The results demonstrated that patients with gynecological cancers had a low quality of life, and experience higher anxiety and depression.

Health related quality of life scales in women diagnosed with gynecological and breast cancer: the role of resilience. A systematic review

“…Nowadays, there are few specific quality-of-life scales for patients with gynecological and breast cancer. Moreover, those that exist do not properly reflect some gynecological cancer-specific features, such as resilience, premature menopause or sexuality, that is why despite gynecological cancer modules are slowly emerging, specific scales for gynecological and breast cancer are required to develop and expand itselves [15,40].…”

“…In short, many women worsen their quality of life because of cancer treatment [15,35]. Due to the common peculiarities to most gynecological and breast cancers, which have to do with aesthetic sequels secondary to mutilating surgeries, the possibility of suffering an induced and early menopause and dissatisfaction in sexual intercourse, makes it necessary to validate specific health related quality of life and resilience scales for this concrete group of patients [3,4,6].…”

“…Those have to be always administered in addition to the core questionnaire (EORTC QLQ-C30) [34]. There are specific questionnaires on breast, cervical, endometrium, ovarian and vulva cancers as shown in Table 2 [12,13,15,35,36]. All of them are validated unless the vulva one which is in last stage of development.…”

“…That is why, resilience has been pointed as a major issue for caring patients with cancer [2], as it can help patients to deal with the affliction and cancer-related troubles. It can be extrapolated to cancer risk mutations carriers too [12][13][14][15]. Nevertheless, there are no scales of resilience and health-related quality of life pointed specifically at gynecological and breast cancer patients.…”

Challenges in the Marital Life of Women with Gynecological Cancers: A Qualitative Study

“…Studies have shown that patients with cancer face numerous challenges in their marital life such as divorce, and in fact their illness has a more negative impact on their marital life than they expected (32,33). On the other hand, it has been found that women are more likely to get divorced when diagnosed with cancer than men (34).…”