Gender aspects in quality of life of lung cancer patients

Introduction: To evaluate quality of life of lung cancer patients, the European Organisation for research and treatment of cancer (EORTC) updated the former module LC13, which includes symptoms with targed therapy und surgery and is used together with the QLQ-C30. Recently the influence of gender especially in lung cancer is investigated. Aims and objectives: Hence we analyzed gender differences with the help of the questionnaire QLQ-C30 and LC 29. Methods: This is a prospective, non-interventional, multicentre study, which took place in nine different countries (Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Israel, Norway, Poland, Spain, Taiwan, Cyprus). To determinate gender differences we used covarianz analyses, in which gender was a fixed factor. Following covariates were included Tumor type, therapy approach (palliative vs curative), education, surgery vs radiochemotherapy, targed therapy vs radiochemotherapy, NSCLC stage IV vs all other stages, comorbidity (yes vs no) Results: 200 patients participated in this study (women n=82 and men n=118). Median age was 65 years. Most women were non smoker (n=17, 65.4%) in comparison to men (n=9, 34.5%). Women as well as men had a median Karnofsky Performance Status of 80%. The important clinical variables are shown in the table. Conclusions: In summery the data show that there is no significant gender difference in quality of life of lung cancer patients except the symptom “coughing”. Estimated marginal means