Quality of life of adult retinoblastoma survivors in the Netherlands

Abstract

Background: To assess the quality of life (QoL) and predictors thereof in Dutch adult hereditary and non-hereditary retinoblastoma (RB) survivors.

Quality of life in survivors of childhood cancer: a systematic review of the literature (2001–2008)

“…Physical well-being Differences in physical well-being between survivors and comparison groups ranged from large to none across most studies [28,30,[32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40]. Two studies reported survivors as scoring their physical well-being as better than the general population [29,31].…”

“…Most studies found small to no significant differences between survivors and comparison groups with respect to psychological well-being [28,30,33,34,36,37,39,40]. Five studies reported higher psychological well-being for survivors [29,31,32,35,38].…”

“…Ten of the 13 studies included participants with several different types of cancer [28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37], while two focused exclusively on retinoblastoma [38,39] and one on neuroblastoma [40]. Six of the studies limited their scope to children and/or adolescents only [29,30,32,33,38,40], and seven included adolescents and/or adults [28,31,[34][35][36][37]39].…”

“…Six of the studies limited their scope to children and/or adolescents only [29,30,32,33,38,40], and seven included adolescents and/or adults [28,31,[34][35][36][37]39]. The studies were conducted in the US, Canada, Austria, Belgium, and the Netherlands.…”

“…Maunsell et al [37] also showed that CNS survivors reported lower scores in the psychosocial domains, but effects sizes were small. van Dijk et al [39] reported clinically significant mental health problems for retinoblastoma survivors, who experienced anxiety, depression, and feelings of loss of control. Both Pemberger et al [31] and Stam et al [34] reported that diagnosis did not contribute to mental health index scores.…”