Predictors affecting quality of life in upper aero-digestive tract cancer patients: A case control study from India

Publication date: Available online 9 February 2017
Source:Oral Surgery, Oral Medicine, Oral Pathology and Oral Radiology
Author(s): Bhawna Gupta, Narinder Kumar, Newell W. Johnson
ObjectiveTo measure quality of life (QOL) in upper aero-digestive tract (UADT) cancer patients in comparison to hospital based controls. We also assessed the impact of various clinical predictors at time of diagnosis of disease/cancer on QOL in these patients.Study designA case-control study was conducted (N=480) with 240 UADT cancer cases and 240 controls matched by gender and age (+5 years) from two different hospitals in Pune, India. The University of Washington Quality of Life Questionnaire was used to measure QOL and was administered by face-to-face interviews. Various QOL domains were analysed using one-way analysis of variance and Bonferroni adjustments for post hoc comparisons.ResultsCases had significantly lower scores across all domains of QOL as compared to controls. Overall, the most affected domains were anxiety and mood. Cancer site significantly influenced QOL with oropharynx and hypopharynx cancer cases having the worst mean scores across all domains. Stage IV cancer patients had the worst mean scores across majority of the QOL domains. Our findings highlight the complex interactions between individual and clinical predictors that have an impact on QOL.ConclusionsQOL needs to be incorporated as an important outcome measure in an individualized approach to therapeutic and palliative care planning of UADT cancer cases to enable a better quality of survival.



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