Quality of life 5-10 years after primary surgery for oral and oro-pharyngeal cancer

This study reports the quality of life in long-term survivors of oral cance r treated by primary surgery. Two hundred and twenty patients were treated at the Regional Maxillofacial Unit between the years 1987 and 1992, of whic h 48 were alive and disease free in July 1997. Thirty-eight patients self-c ompleted the following questionnaires: University of Washington Quality of Life Scale (UW-QOL), the European Organisation for Research and Treatment o f Cancer (EORTC) core QOQ-C30 (v2) and the EORTC Head and Neck (H&N35). Res ults for this group were compared with the one year findings of a similar p rospective cohort treated in 1995. Long-term survivors tended to report a g ood or excellent quality of life. Quality of life deficits in the long-term survivors were similar to those at one year. However, a larger longitudina l study is required to test this relationship more rigorously. The similari ty of domain scores suggests that quality of life evaluation at one year is a useful marker of long-term outcome.