Cancer survivors' quality of life below the norm

Even after more than a decade after diagnosis, cancer survivors may have a poorer quality of life and more health limitations than others their age, according to a U.S. study.

Government researchers found that among nearly 7,300 adults in a national health survey, cancer survivors reported a lower quality of life, more time lost from work and greater health limitations than did other men and women the same age. The difference was seen even among those who'd been diagnosed with cancer 11 or more years earlier.

The persistence of such health effects for so many years after cancer diagnosis is an unexpected finding, lead study author Dr. K. Robin Yabroff told Reuters Health.

The reason for the long-lasting impact on health and quality of life is unclear, partially because it's unknown how many of the long-term survivors had had cancer recurrences, according to Yabroff, a researcher at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland.

It is also not clear what type of treatment the survey respondents had undergone. Cancer treatment, Yabroff noted, can itself have lasting effects on well being. For example, compared with treatments such as surgery, chemotherapy for breast cancer has been linked to worse pain and poorer general health five years after treatment. When it comes to prostate cancer, surgery may cause persistent incontinence or impotence.

More research is needed into the long-range effects of different cancer treatments and different types of cancer, Yabroff and her colleagues write in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

The study included 1,823 men and women who had been diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lives. Compared with adults of the same age, gender and education level, the cancer survivors reported poorer health and more lost work days.

Overall, 31 percent of cancer survivors described their health as fair or poor, versus 18 percent of cancer-free adults.

Long-term health effects were seen regardless of the type of cancer. Although people diagnosed with lung cancer or tumors with similarly poor survival rates reported poorer well-being than did survivors of diseases such as breast, prostate and colon cancers.

It is possible that in patients with lung and other "short-survival" cancers the disease may have been active - and possibly spread throughout the body - at the time of the study, the researchers suggest.

According to the authors, the number of cancer survivors in the U.S. is expected to keep growing over the coming decades, as the population ages and improvements in diagnosis and treatment allow more and more people to live for years after a cancer diagnosis.

SOURCE: Journal of the National Cancer Institute, September 1, 2004.