Background: Cancer is considered as the second leading cause of death worldwide. Objectives: To evaluate
health-related quality of life (HRQOL) among cancer patients receiving chemotherapy and to identify the most important
determinants that affect them. Methods: This cross-sectional study included 190 cancer patients who have been received
chemotherapy at the day care clinics in Nasser Institute Cancer Center (NICC). To address our subject, we analyzed HRQOL,
as measured by the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-General questionnaire (FACT-G), Arabic Version 4, and
depicted the complex relations among physical, psychological, social, and cultural factors. Results: From cancer patients (190)
[aged from 23 to 81 years (50.63±11.79)] 153 patients (80.53%) were females. FACT-G total score ranged from 21.2 to 87
(63.24±12.74) which is considered relatively poor (the physical and functional domains were more affected). HRQOL of the
study group was not affected by gender, employment status, education level, smoking habits or marital status while it was
negatively correlated with age, time since diagnosis of cancer, and disease stage. Patients’ HRQOL shown to be affected by the
presence of many variables like low-performance status as evaluated by Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) scale,
associated comorbidities, exposure to radiotherapy, history of surgery, and absence of menstrual status in female patients. A
positive correlation was found between HRQOL and higher body mass index (BMI), and it was observed that the HRQOL of
patients with higher perceived financial status was better. Conclusion: The HRQOL of cancer patients tended to be lower than
the norms of the healthy people. Preplanned health programs should be designed to support early disease diagnosis, optimizing
treatment choices, controlling of associated comorbidities, improving patients’ performance status as well as working on
improving health insurance coverage. |
