Kavitha Konnakkaparambil Ramakrishnan1 , Sreekumar Damodaran2
BACKGROUND Breast cancer is the most common female cancer worldwide and carries significant psychosocial morbidity. The diagnosis of the disease and the treatment modalities like surgery and chemotherapy contribute to the morbidity. Physical and psychosocial morbidity associated with diagnosis of cancer and treatment modalities like mastectomy and chemotherapy can lead to significant decline in the quality of life of these patients. We wanted to assess the quality of life in patients undergoing mastectomy for carcinoma breast, identify the preoperative factors that affect the quality of life and find out the correlation between degree of neuroticism of the individual and quality of life. METHODS 35 female patients who had mastectomy for breast cancer were evaluated at three time points, preoperatively, immediately after surgery and 2 months after surgery. Quality of life was assessed by WHO-QoL BREF and neuroticism was assessed by Eysenck Personality Inventory-Neuroticism subscale (EPI-N). RESULTS There was a significant decline in quality of life over the course of three interviews. Age, marital status, menopausal status and chemotherapy were factors which had an influence on quality of life. Preoperative EPI-N scores negatively correlated with quality of life. CONCLUSIONS There is significant deterioration in the quality of life of patients undergoing mastectomy for breast cancer. Patients who had preoperative chemotherapy had a poorer quality of life. Our study shows that quality of life is affected by age, marital status, menopausal status, and level of neuroticism.
