Mg. Guren et al., Quality of life in patients with urinary diversion after operation for locally advanced rectal cancer, EUR J SUR O, 27(7), 2001, pp. 645-651
Aims: When locally advanced or recurrent rectal cancer involves the bladder
or prostate, curative treatment often requires pelvic exenteration. The ai
m was to assess the quality of life (QoL) in disease-free patients with uri
nary diversion after extensive surgery for advanced rectal cancer.
Methods; Twelve patients with urinary diversion (cases) were compared with
25 randomly selected patients given the same treatment, but without urinary
diversion (controls). An age- and gender-adjusted general population was i
dentified (reference). QoL was assessed with the EORTC questionnaires QLQ-C
30, QLQ-CR38, and parts of the QLQ-BLM30.
Results: The cases did not report significantly worse overall QoL than the
controls or the reference population. Both cases and controls had low mean
scores of sexual function, and high mean scores of male sexual problems. In
the nine cases that had two stomas, overall QoL was not worse than in the
control or reference groups.
Conclusions: Tumour-free patients did not report worse QoL scores than the
controls or the general population, despite most having two stomas and low
sexual function. Fear of reducing the patient's QoL should not be a major c
ontraindication when surgery with urinary diversion is warranted to obtain
curative resection. (C) 2001 Harcourt Publishers Ltd.