Quality of life in female with breast cancer

Abstract

Background: The immediate effect of breast cancer and its treatment on the patient's psychological status and later adaptation of the patient with diagnosis and treatment of the disease may be led to disturbances in the quality of life of the patients.

 Objective. To measure Quality of life (QOL) in females with breast cancer, to find the factors that can improve their QOL and to identify the sociodemographic and clinical factors that have an influence on the QOL.

Methods. The study sample was a convenient non-random sample of 103 patients diagnosed to have breast cancer at least one month after diagnosis. The data were collected by face-to-face interviews which took about 15-20 minutes with each patient, to fill out a standard questionnaire prepared for this purpose.

Results. The individual patient QOL score has been 0-400, divided (0-80) was very poor, (81-160) was poor, (16l-240) acceptable, (241-320) good, and (321-400) very good. The percentage of clinical presentations were breast lump, mastalgia, lymph node enlargement, non-specific complain, nipple retraction & discharge were (77%, 42%, 32%, 29%, 22%, I5%) respectively. Statistical analysis shows that there is a direct relationship between marital state & social domain where married appear to have good QOL regarding social domain also homeowner had association with social domain where p value: 0.014 which is significant. Conclusion. The environmental domain of QOL was found to have a significant association with age, menarche, crowding index, living in urban, home ownership & car ownership.