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Quality of life of breast cancer patients in adjuvant therapy

This study aimed to assess the Quality of Life (QoL) and to identify the domains affected in breast cancer patients receiving adjuvant therapy and to correlate them with sociodemographic, clinical and therapeutic characteristics. This is a cross-sectional study with 35 patients, developed from August, 2007, to December, 2008. The Quality of Life Core-30-Questionnaire (QLQ-C30) instrument was used. The general Quality of Life was considered less than satisfactory. The most affected domains were: emotional function, insomnia, pain and fatigue. In the correlations, the patients above 60 years presented worse scores on emotional function, the patients submitted to the surgery related more constipation, patients receiving radiotherapy presented worse scores on general QoL and the ones that had more than six cycles of chemotherapy presented the emotional function affected and dyspnea. The conclusion is that the adjuvant treatments had affected in some way the patients, causing a deficit in the emotional function and other related symptoms, and impaired their QoL.

Quality of life; Breast neoplasms; Oncologic nursing


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