Prospective study of the influence of psychological and medical factors on quality of life and severity of symptoms among patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma.

About 400,000 people worldwide are diagnosed with oral squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) annually, and the incidence is increasing. Many advanced carcinomas of the oral cavity require radical surgical treatment that can impair patient's quality of life (QoL) and severity of symptoms. We therefore aimed to identify coping strategies and disease-specific medical factors that affect QoL and severity of symptoms. Patients with oral SCC were asked to complete the Freiburg Questionnaire on Coping with Illness (FQCI), the University of Washington Quality of life Questionnaire (UW-QOL version 4), and the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI) to measure psychological stress. We also assessed the impact of various factors on QoL and severity of symptoms, including stage and site of tumour, method of reconstruction, time of diagnosis, and social structure (age, sex, marital status, living arrangements, level of education, and employment). We enrolled a consecutive sample of 104 patients over a period of one year. Stepwise linear regression analyses indicated that both depressive coping and size of tumour had an adverse effect on QoL and severity of symptoms. Patients with high educational attainment and those who lived alone reported impaired QoL, and women experienced increased severity of symptoms. Impaired QoL and increased severity of symptoms were associated with a depressive style of coping, size of tumour, educational attainment, and living arrangements. It is important to identify these patients during treatment as they could benefit from psycho-oncological counselling.

Personality influences quality-of-life assessments in adult patients after allogeneic hematopoietic SCT: results from a joint evaluation of the prospective German Multicenter Validation Trial and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

The influence of personality on health related quality of life (QoL) and physical functioning in the setting of allogeneic hematopoietic SCT (alloHSCT) is unknown. We conducted a joint evaluation within two independent cohorts of alloHSCT recipients to investigate the impact of personality on reported QoL and physical functioning. Two-hundred-eight patients (median age 44 years, range 18-72) of cohort 1 and 93 patients (median age 55 years, range 19-79) of cohort 2 after alloHSCT were evaluated. Personality was assessed using the 24-adjective measure (AM), which measures the Big-Five personality domains and the Life Orientation Test-Revised (LOT-R), measuring optimism and pessimism. QoL was measured using the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy with bone marrow transplantation subscale (FACT-BMT), Short Form 36 (SF-36), the human activity profile (HAP), as well as the NIH criteria-based cGVHD activity assessment form and the Lee cGVHD symptom scale. Neuroticism was significantly associated with worse function measured by the HAP and FACT-BMT. Optimism significantly improved QoL captured by the FACT-BMT. Pessimism significantly impaired physical function captured by the HAP and SF-36. Extraversion was significantly associated with reduced depression and lower severity of cGVHD symptoms reported by the patient and the physician. The results suggest that personality traits and pre-treatment QoL assessments should be measured in clinical trials to facilitate the interpretation of QoL data.