Assessing the Quality of Life in Patients With Endometrial Cancer Treated With Adjuvant Radiotherapy

Abstract

External beam radiotherapy negatively affects long-term QOL and sexual functions in endometrial cancer survivors. Vaginal BRT provides higher QOL. Patients with body mass index within normal limits have improved QOL.

Lymphedema after treatment for endometrial cancer − A review of prevalence and risk factors

“…Therefore the populations of EC survivors may also be expected to have higher BMI than the average population. In three of the descriptive studies where the participants answered a questionnaire concerning LLL, higher BMI was significantly associated with more LLL symptoms [34,42,44,45] while in other studies such an association between BMI and risk for LLL was not demonstrated [8,24,28,41,46]. Higher levels of physical activity have been associated with a significantly reduced risk for LLL.…”

“…A large retrospective Dutch study investigated the impact of LA with and without adjuvant RT on HQoL but found no clinically relevant differences in overall HQoL between the groups [61]. Karabuga et al showed negative effect on HQoL after external RT and vaginal brachytherapy with significantly more LLL symptoms after external RT [44].…”

“…Pelvic radiation therapy (RT) given alone or as adjuvant therapy after surgery has a varying impact on the development of LLL. In several studies RT has been shown to significantly increase the risk for LLL [9,10,16,21,23,24,34,37,40,44]. However, there are some studies that fail to demonstrate an association between RT and LLL [8,17,22].…”

Lower Body Lymphedema in Patients with Gynecologic Cancer

“…They often report symptoms such as pain, diarrhea and lymphedema (70). LLL deeply impacts physical activity (71,72) and normal activities like walking, standing or house working.…”

Short commentary on Lymphedema after Treatment for Endometrial Cancer

“…Risk factors remains to be evaluated in correctly designed and sufficiently powered studies. However, lymphadenectomy per se [4][5][6][7], number of lymph nodes removed [6,[8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] and radiotherapy [3, [7][8][9][10][11]14,[17][18][19][20] seem to be established risk factor. Lymphedema onset may begin immediately after surgery or may be delayed for many years.…”