Temporal evolution of quality of life in patients endoscopically treated for sinonasal malignant tumors

The aim of our study is to assess which factors may affect the quality of life (QoL) and its fluctuation over time in adult patients who received endonasal endoscopic oncologic sinus surgery (EOSS) for sinonasal malignancies (SNM) in our center.

We analyzed EOSS cases for primary SNM from January 2015 to June 2020. For each patient, we have recorded the age at treatment, gender, smoking habits, use of psychotropic drugs for mood disorders, stage, histotype, type of surgical resection, need for skull-base reconstruction, development of postoperative major complications, and the use of adjuvant intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT). We evaluated the patient's performance status pre-treatment using the ECOG scale. Quality of life was measured using three questionnaires (SNOT-22; ASK-9; EORTC QLQ-C30 version 3).

Fifty-five patients were enrolled in our study, of whom thirty-two (58.18%) received adjuvant IMRT. Overall, a significant improvement in all QoL outcomes was observed at eighteen months, while, female sex, higher ECOG scores, advanced stage of disease, and adjuvant IMRT were associated with worse QoL. After 18 months the delta in QoL between women and men worsened (in SNOT-22 and EORTC QLQ-GLOBAL) while if only the most fragile patients according to ECOG are considered, this difference was reduced for both tools.

Our analysis revealed that IMRT is the element that has the greatest impact on patient's quality of life, in association with the female sex, ECOG >2, and advanced stage of the disease.