Impact of COVID-19 on Quality of Life in Long-Term Advanced Rectal Cancer Survivors.
Daniel BlaskoClaudia SchweizerTim FitzChristoph SchröterChristopher SörgelAnnett KalliesRainer FietkauLuitpold Valentin DistelPublished in: Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) (2023)
Colorectal cancer remains one of the most commonly diagnosed cancers. Advanced rectal cancer patients receive neoadjuvant radiochemotherapy as well as surgery and suffer from reduced health-related quality of life due to various side effects. We were interested in the role of the COVID-19 pandemic and how it affected those patients' quality of life. A total of 489 advanced rectal cancer patients from the University Hospital Erlangen in Germany were surveyed between May 2010 and March 2022 and asked to fill out the EORTC QLQ-C30 and QLQ-CR38 questionnaires over eight different time points: at the beginning, during and after radiochemotherapy, right before surgery, and in yearly intervals after surgery for up to four years. Answers were converted to scores to compare the COVID-19 period to the time before March 2020, focusing on the follow-ups, the developments over time-including by sex and age-and the influence of the TNM cT-stage. Overall, a trend of impaired functional and symptom scores was found across all surveys with few significances (body image -10.6 percentage points (pp) after one year; defecation problems +13.5 pp, insomnia +10.2 pp and weight loss +9.8 pp after three years; defecation problems +11.3 pp after four years). cT4-stage patients lost significantly more weight than their cT1-3-stage counterparts (+10.7 to 13.7 pp). Further studies should be conducted to find possible causes and develop countermeasures for future major infectious diseases.
Keyphrases
- rectal cancer
- end stage renal disease
- weight loss
- ejection fraction
- newly diagnosed
- locally advanced
- chronic kidney disease
- computed tomography
- sars cov
- mental health
- minimally invasive
- squamous cell carcinoma
- body mass index
- type diabetes
- infectious diseases
- young adults
- contrast enhanced
- dual energy
- surgical site infection