title: Trajectories of quality of life among Chinese patients diagnosed with nasopharynegeal cancer.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  This secondary longitudinal analysis describes distinct quality of life trajectories during eight months of radiation therapy (RT) among patients with nasopharyngeal cancer (NPC) and examines factors differentiating these trajectories.
  
  
  METHODS
  253 Chinese patients with NPC scheduled for RT were assessed at pre-treatment, and 4 months and 8 months later on QoL (Chinese version of the FACT-G), optimism, pain, eating function, and patient satisfaction. Latent growth mixture modelling identified different trajectories within each of four QoL domains: Physical, Emotional, Social/family, and Functional well-being. Multinomial logistic regression compared optimism, pain, eating function, and patient satisfaction by trajectories adjusted for demographic and medical characteristics.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We identified three distinct trajectories for physical and emotional QoL domains, four trajectories for social/family, and two trajectories for functional domains. Within each domain most patients (physical (77%), emotional (85%), social/family (55%) and functional (63%)) experienced relatively stable high levels of well-being over the 8-month period. Different Physical trajectory patterns were predicted by pain and optimism, whereas for Emotion-domain trajectories pain, optimism, eating enjoyment, patient satisfaction with information, and gender were predictive. Age, appetite, optimism, martial status, and household income predicted Social/family trajectories; household income, eating enjoyment, optimism, and patient satisfaction with information predicted Functional trajectories.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Most patients with NPC showed high stable QoL during radiotherapy. Optimism predicted good QoL. Symptom impacts varied by QoL domain. Information satisfaction was protective in emotional and functional well-being, reflecting the importance in helping patients to establish a realistic expectation of treatment impacts.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Psycho-oncology Research and Teaching, School of Public Health, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Wendy W T
authors.initials: WW
authors.lastname: Lam
authors.forename: Michelle
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ye
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Fielding
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D044466:Asian People / Q000523:psychology*; D002681:China; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015233:Models, Statistical; D009303:Nasopharyngeal Neoplasms / Q000523:psychology*; D011788:Quality of Life