This study was designed to develop an estimate of the percentage of cancer survivors with poor mental and physical health-related quality of life compared with adults without cancer.
The study found that poor physical and mental health quality of life were reported significantly more often by cancer survivors than by adults without cancer.
Cancer survivors may be cured of their disease, but they are still more likely to report a poorer quality of physical and mental health than adults who have not had cancer, researchers found.
In a national survey on health-related quality of life, 24.5% of cancer survivors reported poor physical quality of life and 10.2% said they had poor mental quality of life, according to Kathryn Weaver, PhD, of Wake Forest School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, N.C., and colleagues.
That compared with 10.2% and 5.9%, respectively, among adults with no history of cancer, a significant difference (P<0.0001), they wrote online in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers, & Prevention.
They added that survivors generally "report more functional impairment, poorer health, greater psychologic distress, and more mental health needs" based on prior research.
The authors compared the prevalence of poor health-related quality of life in 1,822 cancer survivors with 24,804 adults who did not have a history of cancer through the 2010 National Health Interview Survey, an annual, in-person, national survey that "tracks trends in illness and disability in the U.S." and oversamples blacks, Hispanics, and Asians.
01/11/2012 : By Cole Petrochko / MedPage Today.
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