Association between changes in quality of life scores and survival in advanced non-small cell lung cancer patients

Background and Aim: Lung cancer is well known as an important public health problem because of its high incidence, rapid progression, and poor outcome. Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related death, resulting in over 1 million deaths annually worldwide. Patients with lung cancer experience a variety of distressing symptoms, many of which begin prior to diagnosis and continue throughout the course of the disease and its treatment, adversely affecting functional status and quality of life (QoL). The vast majority of patients, especially those with advanced disease, do not have curative treatment options and therefore, the goal of therapy for such patients is prolongation of survival without negatively impacting QoL. Unfortunately, differences in survival time across the spectrum of available treatments for advanced lung cancer are modest. Thus, treatment for lung cancer which offers the potential for prolonging patient survival must always be judged in the context of its effects on patient QoL. In the current study, we investigated whether pretreatment quality of life parameters as well as changes in quality of life scores from baseline, on day 7 and until second cycle after treatment could predict survival in patients with stages III?IV non-small cell lung cancer.Methods: In this retrospective study of fifty advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients, we evaluated the impact of various quality of life (QOL) parameters as well as clinical features on patient survival. We basicly reported baseline and time dependent change of quality of life parameters and also correlated these parameters with overall survival. To evaluate the quality of life in this patient cohort, we used EORTC-QLQ-C30, quality of life questionnaire.Findings: In this study, we conducted both the univariate and the multivariate analyses of potential predictive factors on survival in the advanced non-small cell lung cancer patients. We found a number of significant correlations among predictor variables and survival. Notably, both baseline and time dependent change of quality of life factors predicted overall survival in patients with NSCLC.Conclusion: We think our findings have clinical implications to predict survival benefits in advanced stage NSCLC patients. We can utilise these predictive factors for a patient based treatment outcome. We can also determine some target group of patients in which we need to improve some of the quality of life parameters. Therefore, we need to calculate various quality of life dimensions routinely in clinical practice, both at the beginning and then after chemotherapy in advanced non-small cell lung cancer patients