Avaliação da Qualidade de Vida Relacionada à Saúde de Pacientes com Câncer da Região de Alfenas – Minas Gerais

Abstract

Noncommunicable diseases and conditions have increasingly impacted the health of individuals. Cancer, as one of these diseases, due to its etiopathogenic characteristics and magnitude, has been configured as a serious public health problem. For these characteristics, it requires the development of research on quality of life. The theoretical framework used in the development of this work is the “Quality of Life Model for cancer survivors”, by authors Ferrel, Dow and Grant. In this model, the authors focus on the domains of physical well-being, psychological well-being, social well-being, and spiritual well-being, defending the interrelationship between the four dimensions exposed with a consequent impact on quality of life. This study aims to assess the health-related quality of

life patients with cancer in the Alfenas region. This is a cross-sectional, descriptive- analytical study, with a quantitative approach, and simple random sampling, developed at

the Oncology High Complexity Assistance Center of a reference hospital for people with cancer, located in a municipality in the south of Minas Gerais. Data collection occurred through an interview between May and December 2019, using the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire Core 30 instrument, validated for Brazil, and a questionnaire that addresses social and demographic and clinical-therapeutic data. Descriptive and inferential statistical analysis was performed, as well as an evaluation of the internal consistency of the scale using Cronbach's alpha coefficient. The study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee. 255 patients diagnosed with cancer participated in the study, most of them from the south of Minas Gerais. Female participants (53,7%), aged 60 to 78 years (53,3%), married (60,7%), religious (97,6%), with elementary education (66,2%) prevailed %), low income (78,4%), retired (51,4%), self-declared white (57.8%), and with an excellent relationship with the

family (58%). The most treated cancers were breast cancer (25%) and gastrointestinal cancer (18,2%). The majority did not present metastasis (55,2%), staging II (16%) prevailed. Surgery (16,8%) and associated treatment (16,4%) were the most commonly performed treatments. In the analysis of Health-Related Quality of Life, it is observed that the most altered domains of the quality of life scale were: Emotional Function 73,2±28,5; Physical Function 75,7±23,6; insomnia 33±41.3 and pain 22,5±30,9. Financial Difficulty had an average score of 23,9 ± 34,7. The results showed that the sociodemographic aspects such as sex, age, education, religion, occupation, financial situation, relationship with family members and clinical and therapeutic aspects such as the stage of cancer, the presence of metastasis, comorbidities, the type of diagnosis and treatment identified in the study population affected health-related quality of life domains in some way. It is noteworthy that, the predictive aspects of Health-Related Quality of Life pointed out in this research must be taken into account when planning strategies to improve the quality of life of cancer patients.