Assessment of quality of life of breast cancer patients attending a tertiary hospital in Bangladesh

Objective: Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed malignancy and a leading cause of death among women. This cross-sectional study assessed the quality of life (QOL) of breast cancer patients attending a tertiary hospital in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Method: Data were obtained from 359 female breast cancer patients at a tertiary hospital between November 23 and December 9, 2019, using a digital platform (Kobo Toolbox). A Bangla translation of the QOL questionnaire (EORTC-QLQ-C30) was used to assess QOL. The survey comprised three scales: global health, functional, and symptoms scale. For the functional and global health scales, we adopted a cut-off level of [≥]66% score for good QOL and [≤]33% for poor QOL, which was reversed for the symptoms scale. Using STATA 13.0, we performed descriptive and logistic regression analyses. Result: Among the 359 patients, 86.35% were housewives, and 50.42% of them came from the Dhaka division. In contrast to the 38.44% and 42.90 % of respondents who scored highly in the social and cognitive categories of the functional scale, respectively, only 8.92% of patients had a high global health status score. Financial difficulties (28.97%) and fatigue (17.82%) were reported as the most distressing factors followed by loss of appetite (14.76%) and insomnia (13.65%). The logistic regression models revealed that women [≥]40 years had higher odds of exhibiting the poor quality of health concerning physical function (AOR 3.59, p=0.005), role function (AOR 3.89, p=0.002), and emotional function (AOR, 2.87, p=0.009) as compared to women<40 years. Conclusion: Our study emphasizes the necessity of integrating psychosocial components for both patients and informal caregivers in the cancer treatment service. Additionally, it is critical to design and implement multi-sectoral policies and integrative techniques to alleviate the most distressing issues for breast cancer patients, as demonstrated in our study: financial hardships, exhaustion, and pain.