Quality of Life of Patients Treated with Radiotherapy in an Upper Middle-Income Country.

The utility of quality-of-life (QoL) measurements in daily clinical practice of cancer patients has been shown to influence decision making in 30.1% of medical interventions and in 63.2% of non-medical interventions. The purpose of our study was to assess the QoL of patients treated with radiotherapy at an upper middle-income country (UMIC). Fifty-five patients that were treated with 3D-conformal, Intensity-modulated radiation therapy, or Volumetric Modulated Arc Therapy techniques from September 2021 to December 2021(four months). QoL was assessed using (QLQ-C30) in Spanish with the permission from the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC). This was administered in-person before radiotherapy (RT) and six weeks after treatment via phone. A linear transformation to standardize the raw score was applied according to the EORTC QLC-30 Scoring Manual. Data analysis was performed using Stata 12 to compare the global health status, functional scale, symptom scale, mean scores and standard deviations with the EORTC Reference Values for cancer patients. Of the 55 patients treated with RT, 42 (76.4%) were female, 35 (63.6%) were ≥50 years old, with most being diagnosed with cervical (32.7%) and breast cancer (14.5%). Compared with the pre-RT scores at 6 weeks after RT completion, patients had a significant increase in their global health status from 62.2 to 71.78 compared to the baseline assessment (p value 0.06). Emotional functioning, fatigue, pain and insomnia showed no significant differences compared to before treatment. Further studies are needed in UMICs to understand how patient education and pretreatment information can help patients undergoing radiation therapy to cope with the process of therapy to better estimate predictors of quality of life after radiation therapy, and to see if patient reported QoL recovers over time at different timeline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]