Quality-of-life issues in the treatment of testicular cancer

Abstract

Quality of life (QOL) issues in testis cancer have recently assumed great importance for both physicians and patients. Since most of the patients are going to be long-term survivors, with modern therapeutic approaches, psychosocial difficulties and sexual life problems may become one of the major long-term complications of testis cancer treatment. QOL studies available demonstrate that approximately 10% of the patients will suffer from enduring long-term psychological problems, namely anxiety, depression, fatigue, and disrupted intimate relationships. Since these problems develop unrelated to the therapeutic approach, one has to develop risk profiles predicting psychological illness, such as with psychological counseling, prior to the initiation of the therapy. Impairment of sexual life and infertility distress represent other long-term sequelae of testis cancer treatment. The highest incidence of sexual dysfunction develops within the first 6 months following therapy, with most patients recovering within the next 3 years, resulting in a 15% rate of long-term sexual dysfunction. This relatively high frequency of sexual problems warrants an adequate counseling before and after therapy. Future perspectives of QOL research in testis cancer has to concentrate on the development of a site- specific questionnaire. Since the different therapeutic strategies in clinical stage 1 testis cancer result in the same high cure rates but may encounter various levels of psychosocial distress, QOL appears to represent the most important endpoint end of different treatment modalities in the clinical setting of different treatment modalities and QOL documentation must be integrated in all clinical study protocolls. QOL studies are important issues in the evaluation of each new future method of treatment modality going to be established for testis cancer.