Urological Science

Urological Science

Volume 26, Issue 4, December 2015, Pages 254-258
Urological Science

Original article
Determinants of quality of life in prostate cancer patients: A single institute analysis

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.urols.2015.06.288Get rights and content
Under a Creative Commons license
open access

Abstract

Objective

To determine factors that influence quality of life in prostate cancer patients.

Patients and methods

Patients with pathologically verified prostate cancer and treated at the National Cheng Kung University Hospital were invited to fill out the World Health Organization Quality of Life-BREF questionnaires at the outpatient clinic. We explored the determinants of quality of life including age, education, income, marital status, disease stage, and treatment modality using a mixed-effects model.

Results

From January 2013 to July 2014, a total of 248 patients were investigated and 404 measurements were performed. Among them, there were 110 patients, 48 patients, and 90 patients with localized, locally advanced, and metastatic disease, respectively. After adjustment for comorbidities and other confounders, patients who were married showed a significantly higher score in the domains of physical health, social relationships including sexual satisfaction, and opportunities to obtain information and leisure activities. A higher income was associated with a higher score in physical, psychological, and environment domains. Patients with metastatic disease showed lower scores in the physical domain.

Conclusion

Our data demonstrated that marital status is an important determinant of quality of life in prostate cancer patients besides other sociodemographic factors. Clinicians are advised to provide more social support recourses for patients who do not have a partner.

Keywords

prostate cancer
quality of life
questionnaire
sociodemographic

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