Changes in Quality of Life of Women with Breast Cancer Over Time during Chemotherapy after Surgery and during Radiation Therapy

Abstract

The study was conducted in the Medical Oncology and Radiotherapy Out patient Department and Surgical and Oncology wards of Christian Medical College, Vellore for a period of 18 months from January 2004 to June 2005. The aim of the study was to assess the changes in quality of life of women over time before treatment, during chemotherapy, after surgery and during radiation therapy. Conceptual frame work for this study was adopted from the Lin Zhan and Ferrans Quality of life model. The first part of the study was involved with instrument development based on the findings from a qualitative study. Ferrans and Powers quality of life Index - Cancer Version was modified. Then part of the study consisted of the assessment of reliability of the modified instrument and the Cronbach s value was found to be 0.91 for the English version and 0.93 for the translated Tamil version which indicated high inter item reliability. A pilot study was done to assess the feasibility of the study and necessary changes were adopted. Women diagnosed to have cancer breast and whose treatment plan included three modes of therapy i.e. chemotherapy, surgery and radiation therapy were chosen for the descriptive longitudinal study. The subjects were selected using non probability consecutive sampling technique belonging in the age group 20 to 65 years. Women s quality of life was assessed before starting treatment and the assessment continued during chemotherapy, after surgery and during radiation therapy. CONCLUSION: The concept of quality of life is emerging as a new paradigm for oncology nursing. It offers a central organizing frame work for integrating the diversity of caring behaviours that nurses embrace. Oncology nursing therapeutics primarily focuses on enhancing quality of life whether the goal of medical treatment is cure or palliative relief. Quality of life has been incorporated into health care as an outcome measure. Quality of life is a perception, denoting the way individual patients feel about their health status and non medical aspects of their lives.