Assessment of quality of life for oral cancer patients receiving chemotherapy treatment at a government tertiary care center

Objectives: Quality of life (QOL) is a valuable prognostic indicator of survival in cancer patients. It further aids the health-care professionals to cater to patient needs. This study aimed to estimate longitudinally the changes in the QOL of oral cancer patients in early and late stages and receiving chemotherapy treatment. Materials and Methods: This was a prospective observational study conducted with 400 oral cancer patients receiving chemotherapy treatment at a government tertiary care cancer hospital in Jaipur city. QOL for each patient was measured before treatment, after 6 months, and 1 year posttreatment using the instrument Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-Head and Neck version 4. Statistical analysis was conducted with IBM Statistical Package for the Social Sciences for Windows version 17.0 software (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY, USA). For all the analyses, P < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: A statistically significant difference in the mean score for physical (P < 0.0001), social (P < 0.0001), and functional (P = 0.001) well-being was recorded for early- and late-stage cancer patients at baseline. Only emotional (0.03) and social (0.04) well-being showed a significant improvement for late-stage cancer patients in contrast to early-stage patients where all QOL subscores improved longitudinally. Conclusion: Early-stage disease is associated with better QOL. Chemotherapy treatment could improve only emotional and social well-being parameters in late-stage disease patients. QOL studies can be fruitful clinical endpoint and should be inculcated in the framework of various tertiary care centers.