局所温熱療法と化学および放射線療法の併用治療を受けたがん患者に対する生活の質 (QOL) の評価

Improvement in the quality of life (QOL) is considered to be one of the main goals in the treatment of patients with advanced cancer. The purpose of this study was to assess the QOL for patients during the course of combined treatments which included local hyperthermia (HT) plus chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy. Eighty nine patients (M/F ratio was 44/45) with various malignancies were questioned using the Japanese version of the ‘European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) QOL Questionnaire Core 30'. Assessment was performed before the beginning of HT therapy, and after 8 weekly sessions. In addition, a longitudinal study was performed with 14 patients after 16, 24 and 30 sessions. It was seen that gender may influence various aspects of the QOL during the treatments. For instance, female patients performed better with regards to the social aspects whereas they displayed worse somatic parameters. Regarding age, although younger patients claimed more financial problems before HT, onset of HT did not cause any additional difficulties in this respect. Surprisingly, HT led to a better recovery from a loss of appetite in elderly patients. In considering the relationship between the QOL and treatment response, better responses were associated with both superior pretreatment emotional functioning and improvement in the QOL during the therapy. The best QOL performance was observed for patients with breast and lung cancer. In addition, patients who underwent long-term HT which lasted for 36 weeks, had stable QOL parameters throughout the entire period of observation. This leads us to suggest that somatic, social and psychological QOL parameters for cancer patients may be improved by combined treatment modalities which include HT. In addition, both pretreatment emotional status and improvement in the QOL during the course of treatment may influence the objective treatment outcome.