الفهرس | Only 14 pages are availabe for public view |
Abstract Background: Advancement in breast cancer diagnosis and treatment have led to an increase in patients{u2019} survival so, there is a greater emphasis on quality beside quantity of survival. Objectives: To assess Health related quality of life (HRQoL) among female breast cancer patients at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), Cairo University (CU) and its relations with the demographic, clinicopathological and management characteristics, also to evaluate patients’ knowledge about arm lymphedema before and after health awareness about lymphedema. Patients and Methods: This is a hospital-based cross sectional study including 200 female breast cancer patients managed at the NCI, CU. Arabic version of Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-Breast Cancer questionnaire (FACT-B+4) was used for assessment of QoL and patients’ knowledge about arm lymphedema before and after health awareness (intervention study) was evaluated. Results: The majority of the study participants were married, housewives, not educated and without family history of cancer (70.0%, 93.0%, 42.0% and 63.0%, respectively). Many factors affected the QoL scores including age, marital status, occupation, smoking, residence, comorbidities, symptoms, grade, arm lymphedema, chemotherapy, radiation, and occurrence of recurrence. Knowledge about arm lymphedema was very poor and after health awareness it has significantly improved |