The relationship between dyspnea and patient satisfaction with quality of life in advanced cancer

Goals of the work

Dyspnea is a common symptom in patients with advanced cancer. The goal of this study was to investigate the relationship between dyspnea and patient satisfaction with quality of life (QoL) in advanced cancer.

Materials and methods

A case series of 954 cancer patients treated at the Cancer Treatment Centers of America® was investigated. Dyspnea was measured using the EORTC dyspnea subscale. Patient satisfaction with QoL was measured using the Ferrans and Powers Quality of Life Index (QLI). The relationship between dyspnea and QLI was evaluated using multivariate analysis of variance and multiple regression analysis.

Results

Of 954 patients, 579 were females and 375 males with the median age at presentation of 56 years (range: 20–90 years). Of these patients, 66% did not respond to prior treatment. Most common cancers were breast (26%), colorectal (19%) and lung (16%). After controlling for the effects of age and treatment history, every ten unit increase in dyspnea was statistically significantly associated with 0.81, 0.16, 0.47, and 0.47unit decline in QLI health/physical, social/economic, psychological/spiritual and global function score, respectively.

Conclusions

We found that dyspnea is strongly correlated with patient satisfaction with QoL in advanced cancer. Future studies should evaluate the impact of integrative cancer care services on patient satisfaction with QoL.