Quality of Life in Patients With Head and Neck Cancer

Abstract

It is difficult to achieve "statistically significant" results in a single-institution setting. The "composite" QOL score may not be a sufficiently sensitive tool. Analysis of separate domains may be more effective.

Long-term Functional and Quality-of-Life Outcomes After Transoral Robotic Surgery in Patients With Oropharyngeal Cancer

“…No significant correlation was found between length of time at long-term follow-up and any of the outcome measures (as discussed in the Statistical Analysis subsection of the Methods section), suggesting that outcome measures may have stabilized by this time. This finding is consistent with previous longitudinal research in the population with head and neck cancer that has found few significant improvements in status after 1 year . Between-group comparison confirmed that there were significant between-group differences for the PSS-Eating and HNQOL-Eating subscales.…”

Quality of Life Outcomes in Laryngeal and Oropharyngeal Cancer Patients after Chemoradiation

“…Only 6 percent (2 of 31) of patients in our series reported an outstanding quality of life. This finding is consistent with reports in the literature 17,18 . As counselors, physicians must provide patients with information so they can have both hope and realistic expectations with respect to treatment outcomes.…”

Quality of Life After Treatment for Advanced Laryngeal and Hypopharyngeal Cancer

“…They attributed this to three main issues inherent in single institutional studies: selection bias for treatment decisions, small population because of poor survival in advanced disease, and low statistical power attributed to limited numbers of patients at a single treatment center. We agree with the conclusions of the University of Washington group 9 that multi‐institutional comparisons of outcomes must be made to adequately compare QOL between SRT and CRT.…”