QUALITY-OF-LIFE IN BREAST-CANCER .1. PHYSICAL AND SOCIAL WELL-BEING

Almost 2 million breast cancer survivors reside in the United States. An increase in consumer advocacy and media attention to this disease h as helped bring breast cancer survivorship to the forefront of public attention. This has led to increased attention on quality of life (QOL ) issues for these survivors of breast cancer. This two-part article p resents the results of a qualitative, descriptive study evaluating the QOL of 21 breast cancer survivors. This study is based on our concept ual model of QOL including physical, psychological, social, and spirit ual well-being. Part I of this article describes the impact of breast cancer on the physical and social domains of QOL based on in-depth int erviews with breast cancer survivors.