Abstract
Introduction: Lung cancer is the most common cause of death among all malignant neoplasm in men. Most of lung cancer patients are diagnosed in advanced stage, which requiers different treatment modalities (chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy) and has a high mortality rate. Some studies suggest that initial Quality of Life (QOL) is a strong prognostic factor for survival in lung cancer. Proper evaluation of QOL leads to improvement of QLL, especially in patients with terminal stage illness, and is an important part of supportive and palliative management of these patients.
Aims and Objectives: To examine the initial QOL in newly diagnosed advanced lung cancer patients.
Methods: Observational stutudy included patients with histologically diagnosed advanced lung cancer within 8 weeks of diagnosis. To assess patients'QOL, we used the SF36 questonnaire. Chisquared test (x2test) was used for statistical analysis and p<0.05 was considered as statistically significant.
Results: Out of 60included participants (mean age 58.8+/-5.9), 22 patients were female (36.7%) and 38 male (63.3%;x2 = 6.04, p<0.05). 24 patients (40.00%) reported their current general health status as poor and 14 patients (23.3%) self estimated that their health will get worse. Preserved social interactions, emotional support and stable emotional ststus were associated with better QOL, until a terminal perception of prognosis was related with lower QOL, higher rate of anxiety and depression.
Conclusions: In our group of patients QOL was associated with lower severity of physical and emotional symptoms. Noting the significance of complex relationship between patient's perception of health status and QOL will ofer better and more effective psychosocial supporting measures.
- Copyright ©the authors 2017