Assesment of Quality of Life and Symptoms in Elderly Cancer Patients

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: This study was planned as a descriptive study for symptom assessment and determination of quality of life in 65 year old and older cancer patients. METHODS: The study sample consisted of 106 patients treated at a university hospital 'Oncology Clinic and Outpatient Chemotherapy Unit' between December 2015 and March 2016. The sociodemographic questionnaire, the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC), the Quality of Life (QOL) Group and the Quality of Life Scale and the Memorial Symptom Assessment Scale (MSDS) were used in the study. RESULTS: The mean age of the patients who participated in the study is 71.6 +- 0.5 (min: 65, max: 84). EORTC QLQ-C30 subscale average scores; Overall Health Score is 41.50 +- 21.14, Functional Scale is 59.22 +- 28.08 and Symptom Scale is 38.07 +- 24.23. The most frequent symptoms that the patients had were fatigue (83%), dry mouth (71.7%) and pain (62.3%). DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: The mean scores of the general health score of the patients were found to be low. They often suffer from fatigue, dry mouth and pain. It has been determined that there is a positive relationship between the symptoms and the quality of life subscales of the patients and the symptom scale subscale, which is a negative correlation between the general health score and the functional scale subscales. Managing disease and treatment-related symptoms of patients will contribute to the improvement of quality of life.

Keywords

• elderly
• cancer
• symptom
• quality of life