Quality of life in long-term cervical cancer survivors compared with healthy women and women with benign gynecological disorders

Abstract

Objective: The impact of cervical cancer treatment on the quality of life of long-term survivors compared with the general female population is controversial, and no studies have been conducted comparing patients with benign gynecological diseases. The aim of this study was to compare the quality of life of cervical cancer survivors with that of healthy controls.

Study design: A case-control study was conducted to compare the quality of life of 106 cervical cancer survivors from a tertiary hospital and 185 women admitted to a gynecological outpatient clinic from the same health area for a healthy woman check-up (n 46) or for a benign gynecological disorder (symptomatic, n 113; asymptomatic, n 26). To measure quality of life, self-administered questionnaires, such as the Functional Assessment Cancer Therapy-cervix and World Health Organization quality of life-brief version, were employed. Baseline scores were collected when patients first reported, and further evaluations were completed at 0-6, 7-12, 13-24, 25-60, and more than 60 months. For the contrastive analysis hypothesis, we employed R statistical software.

Results: Except for the environment domain at 0-6, 7-12, and 13-24 months (51.52 vs. 60.73, p < 0.0001; 52 vs. 60.73, p < 0.0001; 49.81 vs. 60.73, p < 0.0001, respectively), we found no statistically significant differences in the quality of life between cervical cancer survivors and controls. We did find differences in the physical health domain scores at 0-6 months (60.22 vs. 72.42, p = 0.039) and the social relationships domain scores at 13-24 months (54 vs. 71.42, p = 0.017) between cases and asymptomatic controls.

Conclusion: Except for physical well-being, environment and social relationships, which were substantially better for controls, especially in the asymptomatic, long-term cervical cancer survivorśquality of life did not vary from that of controls.

Keywords: Case-Control Studies; Genital Diseases, Female; Long-Term Survivors; Quality of Life; Surveys and Questionnaires; Uterine Cervical Neoplasms.