Quality of Life after Breast Conservation versus Oncoplastic Surgery

Abstract

Background: Quality of life (QOL) is becoming an important indicator of treatment efficacy in patients with breast cancer. Most previous studies have compared patients' QOL following breast conserving surgery (BCS) and mastectomy with or without reconstruction. Our aim was to assess the impact of BCS versus oncoplastic breast surgery (OBS).

Methods: Selection of patients for BCS or OBS was performed according to standard criteria e.g the breast and tumor size. The QOL was assessed by employing EORTC QLQ-C3 and QLQ-BR23 questionnaires concurrently and one year after the surgery. The QOL scores one year after the surgery were compared between two groups using analysis of covariance, after adjusting for the baseline values.

Results: A total of 120 patients with a mean age of 46.16±1.4 years were enrolled in the study. BCS and OBS were the main surgical treatment techniques in 57(47.5%) and 63(52.5%) patients, respectively. At the time of the last follow-up visit, there were no differences between the two groups regarding functional scales such as physical (P = 0.761), role (P = 0.356), emotional (P = 0.107), cognitive (P = 0.051), and social functioning (P = 0.659). No differences were observed between the two groups regarding nine symptom scales. Based on the results of breast cancer specific module of the questionnaire, no differences were observed in functional scales and symptoms with the exception of arm symptoms which were less common in OBS group (P = 0.023)

Conclusions: Based on the results of the current study, it could be suggested that there are no significant differences in the in scores of QOL components between patients who received BCS or OBS.