Longitudinal Analysis of Quality of Life in Patients Receiving Conformal Radiation Therapy for Prostate Cancer

Abstract

Definitive CRT for prostate cancer does not compromise global QoL during therapy and up to 2 years after treatment. It has a limited negative effect on role functioning, urinary symptoms and, to a lesser extent, on fatigue with restitution within 2 months to 1 year after treatment.

Quality of Life Outcomes in Patients with Anal Cancer after Combined Radiochemotherapy

“…Studies in colorectal and rectal cancer patients showed that psychosocial quality of life aspects improve over time [12,35]. Chronic fatigue and insomnia are two of the most prevalent problems in cancer patients generally, even years after therapy has been completed [5,8,10,17,20,23,36,37]. Among sexual problems, male sexual dysfunction emotional and social functioning, more gastrointestinal symptoms, and more defecation problems.…”

Late Toxicity and Quality of Life

“…The finding that-independently of the used generic score-global HRQOL is mostly not significantly or relevantly affected by radiotherapy side effects also was reported by the majority of recent published prospective and/or longitudinal studies using 3D-CRT, IMRT, or brachytherapy (BT) alone or in combination with EBRT (Geinitz et al 2010;Goineau et al 2013;Huang et al 2010;Lips et al 2009;Pardo et al 2010;Roeloffzen et al 2010;Schaake et al 2013), even after dose escalation (Goineau et al 2013;Lips et al 2009;Marchand et al 2010), when comparing baseline global HRQOL scales with the changes during follow-up. Though some studies have the limitation of a short follow, there is a growing number of long-term studies.…”

“…In terms of EBRT, the mean impairments of disease-specific HRQOL are mostly reported to be slight or moderate. With regard to urinary symptom and bother scales, the most pronounced deterioration was consistently reported during the first months after treatment, with a recovery of specific HRQOL scales 1-2 years after treatment (Geinitz et al 2010;Gore et al 2009;Huang et al 2010). The further course beyond this time was reported inconsistently, with a second slight and gradual deterioration around 5 years after therapy observed in some studies (Pardo et al 2010).…”

“…In terms of bowel symptoms and bother, a bit more pronounced impairments with similar courses over time were reported. In this context, often complete recovery from bowel bother was reported up to 36 months after treatment (Pardo et al 2010), whereas some studies using predominantly IMRT showed not even a significant deterioration of specific HRQOL scales after the immediate first months after treatment or even during the whole follow-up, comprising follow-up times up to 54 months (Geinitz et al 2010;Goineau et al 2013;Lips et al 2007;Marchand et al 2010). With regard to IMRT, there is growing information that in general, it seems to be possible to carrying out dose-escalated radiotherapy without producing further specific treatment-related HRQOL impairments (Goineau et al 2013;Jereczek-Fossa et al 2013;Lips et al 2007;Marchand et al 2010;Shinohara et al 2013).…”

Erfassung möglicher Verbesserungen im Ablauf der Strahlentherapie — eine Patientenbefragung

“…Die Qualitätssicherung sollte sich nicht nur auf den technischen und organisatorischen Ablauf, sondern auch auf die unmittelbare Patientenbetreuung beziehen. In weiteren Studien sollte der direkte Einfluss verschiedener Betreuungsfaktoren auf die Lebensqualität der Patienten untersucht werden [8,18,19,28]. …”