RESEARCH ARTICLE
The Quality of Life of People with Solid Cancer is Less Worse than Other Diseases with better Prognosis, Except in the Presence of Depression
Cesar Ivan Aviles Gonzalez1, *, Matthias Angermeyer2, Laura Deiana3, Caterina Loi3, Elisabetta Murgia3, Anita Holzinger2, 4, Giulia Cossu3, Elena Massa3, Ferdinando Romano5, Mario Scartozzi3, Mauro Giovanni Carta3
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2021Volume: 17
Issue: Suppl-1, M9
First Page: 315
Last Page: 323
Publisher ID: CPEMH-17-315
DOI: 10.2174/1745017902117010315
Article History:
Received Date: 19/12/2020Revision Received Date: 8/7/2021
Acceptance Date: 9/7/2021
Electronic publication date: 31/12/2021
Collection year: 2021
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Background:
Suffering from Solid Cancer (SC) may adversely impact the Health-related Quality of Life (H-QoL). The aims of this study are to measure the H-QoL in a sample of people suffering from SC and to clarify the role of the co-occurrence of depressive episodes. Results were compared with a healthy control group and with groups of other disorders.
Methods:
In 151 patients with SC (mean±sd age 63.1±11.5; female 54.3%), H-QoL was assessed by SF-12, depressive episodes were identified by PHQ-9. The attributable burden of SC in impairing H-QoL was calculated as the difference between SF-12 score of a community sex and age ¼ matched healthy control group and that of the study sample. The attributable burden of SC was compared with other chronic diseases using specific diagnostic groups drawn from case-control studies that used the same database for selecting control samples.
Results:
H-QoL in people with SC was significantly worse than in the healthy control group (p<0.0001). The attributable burden in worsening the H-QoL due to SC was similar to those of severe chronic diseases, but lower than Multiple Sclerosis (p<0.0001) or Fibromyalgia (p<0.00001). Having a depressive episode was a strong determinant of decreasing H-QoL, regardless of the severity of cancer.
Conclusion:
The findings confirm a strong impact of SC but showed that H-QoL in SC was higher than in chronic diseases with better “quoad vitam” outcome. Since depression was a strong determinant, its prevention, early detection and therapy are the main objectives that must be reached in cancer patients.
