ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: The European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) Quality of Life Group developed a questionnaire to assess sexual health in patients with cancer and cancer survivors. This study evaluates the psychometric properties of the questionnaire. METHODS: The 22-item EORTC sexual health questionnaire (EORTC QLQ-SH22) was administered with the EORTC QLQ-C30 to 444 patients with cancer. The hypothesised scale structure, reliability and validity were evaluated through standardised psychometric procedures. RESULTS: The cross-cultural field study showed that the majority of patients (94.7%) were able to complete the QLQ-SH22 in less than 20 min; 89% of the study participants did not need any help to fill in the questionnaire. Multi-item multi-trait scaling analysis confirmed the hypothesised scale structure with two multi-item scales (sexual satisfaction, sexual pain) and 11 single items (including five conditional items and four gender-specific items). The internal consistency yielded acceptable Cronbach's alpha coefficients (.90 for the sexual satisfaction scale, .80 for the sexual pain scale). The test-retest correlations (Pearson's r) ranged from .70 to .93 except for the scale communication with professionals (.67) and male body image (.69). The QLQ-SH22 discriminates well between subgroups of patients differing in terms of their performance and treatment status. CONCLUSION: The study supports the reliability, the content and construct validity of the QLQ-SH22. The newly developed questionnaire is clinically applicable to assess sexual health of patients with cancer at different treatment stages and during survivorship for clinical trials and for clinical practice.
Subject(s)
Cancer Survivors/psychology , Neoplasms/psychology , Psychometrics , Quality of Life , Sexual Health , Adult , Aged , Aged, 80 and over , Female , Humans , Male , Middle Aged , Surveys and Questionnaires , Young AdultABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION: We describe the initiation of a multidisciplinary centre for robotic surgery including the implementation of robotic-assisted procedures as standard procedure for the majority of cancer operations in urology, gynaecology and gastrointestinal surgery. METHODS: All robotic procedures performed from 2008 to 2013 were included. The information gathered included body mass index, the American Society of Anesthesiologists' physical status classification value (ASA), age, sex, time and type of surgery, duration of procedure, conversion to open surgery, length and type of anaesthesia, re-operations, length of hospital stay and 30-day mortality. RESULTS: The implementation strategy was to start with one specialty at a time, passing on experience from one specialty to the next. The surgical strategy was to begin with standard procedures for which international experience was available and subsequently perform more complex procedures, ending up with robotic-assisted procedures as the standard for most cancer surgery procedures. A total of 2,473 procedures were performed. The operative time was reduced over the period for the main procedures of all three specialties. For prostatectomies, hysterectomies and colectomies, conversion to open surgery occurred in 1.2, 3.8 and 7.7%; the risk of re-operation was 0.2, 2.3 and 7.3%; and, finally, the 30-day mortality was 0.1, 0 and 1%, respectively. CONCLUSION: The implementation was possible as a stepwise introduction across three specialties with low conversion and re-operation rates and a low mortality. A high-volume centre for robotic surgery was developed and patients with malignant diagnoses were offered robotic-assisted surgery within the framework of multidisciplinary cooperation. FUNDING: not relevant. TRIAL REGISTRATION: The study was approved by the Danish Data Protection Agency R. No.: 2007-58-0015.