Quality of life in patients with head and neck cancers

The aim was to assess the psychosocial effects on the quality of life (QOL) of adults with head and neck cancer (HNC) and any gender variations with predictive factors that may influence QOL.

This was a three-month descriptive and prospective evaluation of QOL in 50 adult patients with HNC who were still on treatment but had spent a period of at least four weeks from commencement in a tertiary hospital.

There were 32 males and 18 females with a mean age of 47.74 years. Females had higher mean scores than males in all domains except pain domain, global and general questions. There was no significant difference in the mean score between the genders in all the domains: overall bother, overall satisfaction, response to treatment, site with QOL and health-related QOL (HRQOL). Pain domain correlated significantly with eating and emotion but weakly with stage of the disease. The predictive factor for overall bother was mainly emotion domain, while site of lesion with QOL was for overall satisfaction, response to treatment and HRQOL.

Pain, which is a major problem experienced by these patients with HNC, requires more attention by the caregiver in order to improve their QOL.