Quality of Life in Patients with Head and Neck Cancerafter Extensive Surgical Interventions Background for Decision Making of Therapeutic Procedure?

Overview

A retrospective study of 47 patients with head and neck cancer has been performedat the ORL clinic in Brno. The quality of life was evaluated according to an adjusted questionnairecomposed of EORTC (European Organization for the Research of Cancer) QLQ-C30 and WOL(Revised Questionnaire of the University of Washington) approximately one year after the therapyended. The statistical evaluation employed unpaired non-parametric analysis by means of theMann-Whitney U-test and Fisher Exact Test. A statistically significant deterioration of the qualityof life in a group of patients with resections in the area of oral cavity base and oropharynx wasobserved as compared with those with other tumor localization. The comparison of the quality oflife of patients treated conservatively and those after radical surgery proved to be difficult in ourgroup for rather low numbers of patients with individual localizations of tumors with significantlydifferent prognosis. The authors are going to use less extensive questionnaires for monitoring thequality of life in the future. In addition to the TNM classification and subjective evaluation of thequality of life after therapy, the evaluation of the therapeutic protocol in the future will rather bebased on molecular biology examinations of predictive parameters of the tumor.

Key words:
head and neck cancer, reconstruction, quality of life, therapeutic protocol.