Lack of adverse effect on quality of life of up to six cycles of chemotherapy in gynecologic cancer patients

The aim of this study was to determine whether the prescription of up to six cycles of chemotherapy adversely affected the quality of life (QOL) of patients with a variety of gynecologic cancers. Over a 29 month period, patients presenting to a single gynecologic oncology clinic and who were prescribed cytotoxic chemotherapy were asked to complete a modified FACT-G quality of life form. Scoring was performed according to the FACT-G scoring guide. Analysis of variance was used to compare the mean transformed scores for each cycle. Sixty patients received a total of 257 cycles of chemotherapy. All patients who were offered the test satisfactorily completed the test. Average age was 56.3 years (range: 16-84). Tumor sites included ovary (N = 29), cervix (N = 15), uterus (N = 12), and vulva (N = 4). The associated histologies included adenocarcinoma (N = 35), squamous (N = 18), sarcoma (N = 6), and germ cell tumor (N = 1). The original stage at diagnosis was stage I (N = 16), stage II (N = 9), stage III (N = 22) and stage IV (N = 13). QOL scores for patients with cervical cancers were significantly inferior to patients with ovarian cancers (P = 0.03), uterine cancers (P = 0.02), and vulvar tumors (P = 0.01). A significant improvement in the physical well-being (PWB) subscale QOL score from cycle 2 to cycle 5 was noted (P = 0.03). Two other subscale QOL scores, emotional well-being (FWB) and functional well-being (FWB), revealed an overall improvement from cycle 1 to cycle 6; however, these results did not reach statistical significance. A general downward trend was noted in the social well-being (SWB) and relationship with doctor (RWD) subscale scores. Moreover, overall quality of life, as represented by the summed individual scores, was not significantly affected over the treatment cycles. Again, while an improvement was noted with progressive cycles, these results did not reach statistical significance. This study confirms that the prescription of up to six cycles of cytotoxic chemotherapy to patients with gynecologic cancers results in an overall improvement in subscale and overall QOL; however, the changes noted did not reach statistical significance.