Investigation the Quality of Life and its Relation with Clinical and Demographic Characteristics in Women with Breast Cancer Under Chemotherapy

BACKGROUND: This study was performed to examine quality of life's dimensions and its relationship with some clinical and demographic characteristics on women with breast cancer under chemotherapy referred to the oncology hospital, Isfahan University of medical sciences, Iran. METHODS: This Cross sectional study was conducted among 330 breast cancer patients with simple sampling methodology. Data collection instrument included a questionnaire contains 2 parts (clinical and demographic characteristics information and version 2.0 of the SF-36 questionnaire (the international version). The data were analyzed with 99% confidence by carried out using SPSS(18) with using descriptive and analytic statistics. RESULTS: The majority of subjects’ quality of life was moderate (53.93%). there was a statistically significant relationship between quality of life among breast cancer patients with chemotherapy sessions (P < 0.05, df =4, χ(2) = 16.37). One way Analysis Of Variance (ANOVA) suggested the absence of any significant relationship between quality of life with marital status (f = 0.21; P = 0.92) and employment status (f = 0.26; P = 0.77). Also, Spearman test showed the absence of any significant relationship between quality of life with age (P = 0.60), and the elapsed duration from diagnosis (P = 0.68), however Spearman test showed significant relationship between quality of life and education status (P = 0.002, r = -0.84). CONCLUSION: With regard to results of this study, there was a direct correlation between the number of chemotherapy sessions and patients quality of life. The attitude of the population toward chemotherapy is usually inhibiting and negative, so patients, students and nurses should be trained about chemotherapy efficacy to improve their attitude about chemotherapy, which in turn would lead to improvement of the patients’ quality of life.