Quality of life in 650 lung cancer survivors 6 months to 4 years after diagnosis.
OBJECTIVE
To present the results of a quality-of-life (QOL) assessment performed with the current version of the Lung Cancer Symptom Scale (LCSS) questionnaire in a large single-institutional data set of 650 patients with lung cancer.


METHODS
The study group included 650 patients with pathologically confirmed primary lung cancer whose conditions were diagnosed and/or treated at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn, between January 1, 1997, and December 31, 2001. The QOL assessment was performed using the self-administered LCSS questionnaire (version 2) 6 months to 4 years after the diagnosis of lung cancer.


RESULTS
The item response rate for all 9 LCSS questions was 94.2% with a minimum of 92.9%. Significant differences in overall QOL by sex (P=.04), Karnofsky scale (P<.001), weight loss (P<.001), disease stage (P<.001), and histology (P=.001) were found, but no significant differences in overall QOL by age (P=.17) or marital status (P=.06) were observed.


CONCLUSIONS
Our data suggest that QOL in patients with lung cancer at varying times after diagnosis highly correlates with baseline prognostic factors (disease stage, histology, Karnofsky scale, weight loss, and sex).
Department of Health Sciences Research, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Rochester, Minn 55905, USA.
Adam
A
Svobodník
Ping
P
Yang
Paul J
PJ
Novotny
Eric
E
Bass
Yolanda I
YI
Garces
James R
JR
Jett
James A
JA
Bonner
Jeff A
JA
Sloan
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D015982:Bias; D002289:Carcinoma, Non-Small-Cell Lung / Q000523:psychology; D018288:Carcinoma, Small Cell / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D017567:Karnofsky Performance Status; D008175:Lung Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000401:mortality / Q000523:psychology* / Q000628:therapy; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D008910:Minnesota / Q000453:epidemiology; D009367:Neoplasm Staging; D011379:Prognosis; D011594:Psychometrics; D011788:Quality of Life / Q000523:psychology*; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires / Q000592:standards*; D016019:Survival Analysis; D017741:Survivors / Q000523:psychology*