Health-Related Quality of Life among Egyptian Female Breast Cancer Patients at the National Cancer Institute, Cairo University

BACKGROUND: To measure the quality of life (QoL) of Egyptian females with breast cancer (BC) at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), Cairo University (CU) and its relations with the socio-demographic and clinical characteristics. METHODS: A total of 200 female BC patients were recruited from the medical oncology outpatient clinic during a period from December 2015 to March 2018. The instrument of this study consisted of two parts: the first for Socio-demographic and clinicopathological characteristics, and the second was the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-Breast for patients with Lymphedema (FACT-B+4) questionnaire. RESULTS: The majority of the study participants were married, housewives, and without a family history of cancer (70.0%, 93.0%, and 63.0%, respectively). Most of them presented with breast mass, had IDC, grade II and disease stage III at diagnosis (89.0%, 84.5%, 85.6% and 56.8%, respectively) and had undergone modified radical mastectomy, received adjuvant chemotherapy, radiation, and hormonal therapy (62.0%, 83.8%, 73.5% and 60.5%, respectively). The median FACT-B score was 81 (range 35-133). The medians of subscales were: physical well-being 13 (range 0-28), social well-being 20 (range 0-28), emotional well-being 15 (range 2-24), and functional well-being 16 (range 2-28). The median score for breast subscale was 19 (range 2-32). Many factors affected the QoL scores, including age, marital status, occupation, smoking, residence, comorbidities, symptoms, grade, chemotherapy, radiation, and recurrence. CONCLUSION: QoL of Egyptian females with BC was influenced by several factors like age, marital status, occupation, smoking, residence, comorbidities, symptoms, grade, chemotherapy, radiation, and recurrence.