Wan Leung S, Lee TF, Chien CY, Chao PJ, Tsai WL, Fang FM. Health-related quality of life in 640 head and neck cancer survivors after radiotherapy using EORTC QLQ-C30 and QLQ-H&N35 questionnaires.
BMC Cancer 2011;
11:128. [PMID:
21486431 PMCID:
PMC3083374 DOI:
10.1186/1471-2407-11-128]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 74] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/12/2010] [Accepted: 04/12/2011] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
Abstract
Background
With the advances in modern radiotherapy (RT), many patients with head and neck cancer (HNC) can be effectively cured, and their health-related quality of life (HR-QoL) has become an important issue. In this study, we evaluated the prognosticators of HR-QoL in a large cohort of HNC patients, with a focus on the result from technological advances in RT.
Methods
A cross-sectional investigation was conducted to assess the HR-QoL of 640 HNC patients with cancer-free survival of more than 2 years. Among them, 371 patients were treated by two-dimensional RT (2DRT), 127 by three-dimensional conformal RT (3DCRT), and 142 by intensity-modulated RT (IMRT). The EORTC QLQ-C30 questionnaire and QLQ-H&N35 module were used. A general linear model multivariate analysis of variance was used to analyze the prognosticators of HR-QoL.
Results
By multivariate analysis, the variables of gender, annual family income, tumor site, AJCC stage, treatment methods, and RT technique were prognosticators for QLQ-C30 results, so were tumor site and RT technique for H&N35. Significant difference (p < 0.05) of HR-QoL outcome by different RT techniques was observed at 2 of the 15 scales in QLQ-C30 and 10 of the 13 scales in H&N35. Compared with 2DRT, IMRT had significant better outcome in the scales of global QoL, physical functioning, swallowing, senses (taste/smell), speech, social eating, social contact, teeth, opening mouth, dry mouth, sticky saliva, and feeling ill.
Conclusions
The technological advance of RT substantially improves the head-and-neck related symptoms and broad aspects of HR-QoL for HNC survivors.
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