Objectives: This report assessed the quality of life of ovarian cancer patients undergoing adjuvant and salvage chemotherapy treatment.
Methods: All epithelial ovarian cancer patients requiring chemotherapy to manage their disease were recruited from university based gynecologic oncology clinics. Quality of life was measured using the FACT-O (Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-Ovarian module version 4) questionnaire. Descriptive statistics and two-way analysis of variance were used to compare the effect on the mean quality of life scores with respect to the indications of chemotherapy and best radiologic response. Any P value of less than 0.10 was considered worthy of interest.
Results: Ninety-three patients participated. In the adjuvant setting, there was a trend towards better quality of life with better response to therapy. In patients with a first recurrence, complete response to therapy clearly had a beneficial effect on overall quality of life compared to stable or partial response. There was no significant quality of life difference between those with partial response versus stable disease in a first recurrent setting. In patients with more than one recurrence, no large change in overall quality of life was observed across the range of tumor responses.
Conclusion: Chemotherapy is beneficial to improve quality of life of ovarian cancer patients. Differential effect of tumor response status on quality of life at different treatment phases requires further investigations.