RADIOTHERAPY IN SURGICAL AND NONSURGICAL PATIENTS - THERAPY-RELATED EXPECTATIONS, QUALITY-OF-LIFE AND PHYSICIAN RATINGS

The present study investigates patients' expectations toward radiother apy and their associations to quality of life and physician judgements . Fifty-five patients with tumors of different sites (30 with previous tumor-related surgery, 25 without surgery) admitted to the department of radiotherapy filled out a standardized questionnaire (EORTC QLQ-C3 0, PLC by Siegrist et al., therapy-related expectations and success) b efore and after inpatient radiotherapy. The corresponding physician ra tings were collected. Fifty-eight percent of the patients expected the therapeutic goal ''healing'', whereas from the physician's standpoint this was realistic in only 7 % of cases. The specific radiotherapy-re lated expectations ''tumor control'' and ''pain relief'' reached almos t the same levels in patients and physician (71 % vs 71 % and 40 % vs 44 %). Patients with healing expectancy reported higher quality of lif e at the beginning of the therapy (53.4 % vs 39.9 %); patients expecti ng pain relief reported lower quality of life (37.1 % vs 54.5 %). Surg ical patients who had been operated on within the Fast year (n = 18) s howed a particularly high healing expectancy (83 %), whereas patients whose operation dated back more than 1 year focused on pain relief as therapeutic goal (83 %). The surgeon, as the primary contact person fo r patients, can influence patients' therapy-related expectations. In e xplaining the overall therapeutic strategy, surgeons should also menti on the scope and limits of adjuvant therapies.