Paliatívna medicína a liečba bolesti 2/2012

Quality of life assessment of inpatient cancer patients in palliative care

We assessed quality of life of inpatient cancer patients in palliative care using generic instrument WHOQOL-BREF and specific instrument for cancer patients EORTC QLQ C30. We attempted to find correlations between quality of life and performance status, quality of life and symptoms of advanced disease. Mean global quality of life score on 5 point scale (WHOQOL-BREF) was 3,34, resp. 4,38 on 7-point scale (QLQ C30). Palliative patients achieved worse score for global QL and domain of physical fuctioning in comparision with norms for healthy subjects, score for emotional and social functioning were comparable with healthy population and score for enviroment domain was even better then in healthy subjects. Strong positive significant correlation was found only between Karnofsky Performance Status Scale and domain of physical functioning of quality of life, correlations between performance status and other domains of quality of life were weak or insignificant. Patients with performance status 40 had the worst score for all domains of quality of life, even worse then patients with performance status 30 or 20. Significant correlation between global quality of life and symptoms of advanced disease was found only for fatique.

Keywords: quality of life, palliative care, cancer patient, performance status Karnofsky, WHOQOL- BREF, QLQ C30.