Assessing quality of life of patients after esophageal cancer surgery

ABSTRACT

Background: Esophageal cancer is a disease with poor prognosis and the treatment is very difficult, requiring a combination of methods (surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy), in which surgery remains the most important method. However, quality of life of patients was still less interested in the studies. Objectives: to evaluate the quality of life of patients after esophageal cancer surgery in the Department of Digestive Surgery \ufffd?Viet Duc Hospital from 1994 to 2004. Subjectives and Method: a prospective study was conducted on 164 patients with esophageal cancer surgery at Viet Duc Hospital from January 1994 to June 2004. Results: mortality of the surgery was 5%, and rate of complications was 32.9%. 146 patients were closely followed up the quality of life after the surgery, showed postoperative quality of life was good and moderate (80.1%). Quality of life of patients with radical surgery were better than that in patients without radical surgery, there was statistically significant with p <0.05. Mean postoperative survival time was 24.2 \xb1 2.3 months. Conclussions surgery of esophageal cancer improved quality of life of patients. Radical features of surgery significantly influenced the quality of life of patients after surgery.