Quality of Life and Predictors among Gastrointestinal Cancer Survivors in Iran

Quality of life (QoL) is an important indicator for evaluating treatment outcomes among cancer patients. Therefore, this study aimed to assess QoL and associated factors among Iranian gastric and colorectal cancer survivors.

This epidemiologic study was conducted among 120 gastric and colorectal cancer survivors in Shahid Ghazi Hospital affiliated to Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Iran, in 2019. Participants were selected through the convenience sampling method. The data collection instrument included a demographic and disease-related checklist and cancer-related QoL questionnaire (QLQ-C30). Data were collected using face-to-face interviews and analyzed by the logistic regression model.

The average overall QoL score was 48.98. Based on the threshold, more than half of the participants had a problem in physical performance, cognitive performance, emotional performance, fatigue, pain, and financial subscales. Anemia and marital status were the most predictors in all subscales. HTN and physical activity are the strongest predictors for global QoL subscale and symptom subscale, respectively. These factors predicted a significant proportion of variance for QoL (84% for global QoL, 83.50% for functional subscale, and 67.30% for symptom subscale).

Our findings highlighted that the QoL level of gastrointestinal cancer patients was low. In our study, anemia, marital status, BUN/Cr, HTN, and physical activity were identified as the most important predictor factors of QoL. Therefore, it seems that the formulation and implementation of supportive care programs that aimed to resolve these health problems can play a crucial role in improving the QoL of patients.