[The quality of life following esophagectomy. The results of a psychosocial study of 80 cancer patients]

Abstract

Of 235 patients who, between 1982 and 1988, had undergone an oesophagectomy for cancer of the oesophagus, 80 (64 men, 16 women; mean age 54.6 [39-67] years) were re-assessed for the quality of their life since surgery. Three standardized questionnaires were used ("general physical complaints" [PC], "satisfaction with life" [SL], "psychosocial stress" [PS]), plus data from a representative random group of the normal population (n = 1761; PC), a group of 48 healthy persons (SL) and a group of 788 cancer patients (PS) with different types of malignancy. The point score for PC was, as expected, significantly higher for the patients than the random controls (23.5 vs. 14.3; P less than 0.001), but was lower than that of cardiac (30.2) and psychiatric patients (30.0; P less than 0.001). As for quality of life, the postesophagectomy patients scored 68.17, compared with 56.75 (P less than 0.001) for the healthy controls. The main psychosocial stress was less in the areas of anxiety and depression than in a loss of social activity and impairment of physical capacity.