Relationships between quality of life and finding benefits in a diagnosis of colorectal cancer

Abstract

This longitudinal study investigated relations between benefit-finding domains and outcome measures. Participants were 1,757 individuals diagnosed with colorectal cancer. A written questionnaire and telephone interview were completed at 5-months (Time 1) and 12-months post-diagnosis (Time 2). Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses revealed three psychometrically sound factors: personal growth, interpersonal growth, and acceptance. Results of regression analyses were conducted and found that Time 1 benefit-finding domains accounted for significant amounts of variance in Time 1 positive affect and cancer-related quality of life (both the aggregate score and its social/family, functional, and colorectal cancer-specific well-being subscales). Time 1 personal growth also predicted Time 1 psychological distress. After controlling for Time 1 positive affect, personal growth continued to predict Time 2 positive affect. Results delineate the benefit-finding domains in the context of colorectal cancer and their differential links with outcome measures cross-sectionally, and longitudinally. These findings have implications for theory building and the measurement of benefit-finding.

Prospective international validation of the Quality of Life in Myelodysplasia Scale (QUALMS)

“…Benefit finding has been studied in other cancers, [33][34][35][36] where high levels may be associated with coping better and decreased levels of psychosocial stress; however, studies are not conclusive. 37 Interestingly, unlike the overall QUALMS, or the QUALMS-P, the QUALMS-BF did not show strong correlations with the other QOL scales studied, arguing that this is a new dimension of MDS-related QOL that has not been previously captured.…”

Candidate Predictors of Health-Related Quality of Life of Colorectal Cancer Survivors: A Systematic Review

“…Either associations of higher tumor stage with lower HRQoL were observed [29,33,35,40,42,43,47,48] or there was no significant association between tumor stage and HRQoL [32,39,41,[49][50][51]. Similarly, studies observed either no significant association between tumor localization and HRQoL [29,32,42,51] or that rectal cancer survivors reported lower HRQoL than colon cancer survivors [35,48]. Flow diagram of record identification and screening phases, eligibility assessment, and number of included articles (according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses: the PRISMA statement [94]).…”

“…Twelve studies (5 longitudinal) consistently demonstrated that CRC survivors with a stoma reported lower HRQoL, both in early phases from 6 weeks up to 2 years postdiagnosis [29][30][31][32][33][34] and in later phases from 2 years to Searched databases were PubMed, Embase, and Google Scholar. The initial literature search was performed on September 8, 2014. b A combination of medical subject heading (MeSH) terms and free-text search terms was used.…”

“…Evidence was graded inconsistent for education level, work status, and marital status. One study observed associations of lower educational attainment with lower HRQoL of CRC survivors [31], whereas nine other studies did not observe an association between education level and HRQoL [29,34,35,37,47,48,50,54,55]. Additionally, either working [56] or not working [36] was observed to be associated with lower HRQoL of CRC survivors, or no significant association between HRQoL and work status was observed [48].…”

“…Additionally, either working [56] or not working [36] was observed to be associated with lower HRQoL of CRC survivors, or no significant association between HRQoL and work status was observed [48]. Several studies observed either that not being married or being divorced, widowed, or separated was associated with lower HRQoL in CRC survivors [29,34,39,43,54,69] or found no significant association between marital status and HRQoL [35,37,48].…”