Quality of life among cervical cancer patients following completion of chemoradiotherapy at Ocean Road Cancer Institute (ORCI) in Tanzania

Document Type

Article

Department

Obstetrics and Gynaecology (East Africa)

Abstract

Objective

Effective cancer treatment involves aggressive chemo-radiotherapy protocols that alter survivors’ quality of life (QOL). This has recently aroused the attention not only to focus on clinical care but rather to be holistic and client-centered, looking beyond morbidity and mortality. The study assessed the QOL and associated factors among patients with cervical cancer (CC) after the completion of chemoradiotherapy.

Methods

A cross-sectional analytical study was conducted at Ocean Road Cancer Institute (ORCI) from September to November 2020. A total of 323 CC patients were interviewed with a structured questionnaire of QOL, the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire (EORTC QLQ-C30), and its cervical cancer module (EORTC QLQ-CX24). The QOL domains, socio-demographic and clinical variables were analyzed with Mann–Whitney and Kruskal–Wallis on SPSS version 23, and a P < 0.05 was considered significant.

Results

More than half (54.8%) of the CC patients had a good overall QOL. Overall, QOL was affected by education (P = 0.019), smoking (0.044), sexual partner (P = 0.000), treatment modality (P = 0.018), and time since completion of treatment (P = 0.021). Patients who underwent external beam radiation suffered from significant side effect symptoms (P < 0.05) while those who underwent combined external beam radiation and brachytherapy had higher functioning in most domains (P < 0.05).

Conclusions

A significant improvement in QOL was observed after chemoradiotherapy and was affected by socio-demographic and clinical variables. Thus, calls for individualized care in addressing these distressing symptoms.

Publication ( Name of Journal)

BMC Women’s Health

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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