A Study Of Quality Of Life In Posttreatment Patients With Carcinomas Of Tongue

Objective: Tongue cancer is the most frequent malignant oral-maxillofacial tumor. Traditional treatment mainly consists of operation,accessory chemotherapy and radiotherapy according to patient's condition, which demolishs anatomic structures and organ functions seriously. Patients often have physiological disfunction and psychological disturbance, and their QOL are greatly influenced after treatments. We study on QOL changes and their influent factors of patients treated by different treatment plan, in order to guide the choice of clinical methods and make them gain better QOL. Methods: we investigate and visit patients with tongue cancer before treatment and 1 month after it. These patients are treated in the afilliated West China stomatology hospital of Sichuan university between 2004-10 to 2005-3. In the investigation, we employ questionnaire from UW-QOL and EORTC QLQ-c30 and analysis the scores with SPSS 11.0,the method is t-test and ANOVA. With the outcome, we gain the ralitionship between the clinical method and QOL.Results: (1) the cases that reserve mandible get higher QOL than control group,and their chewing funtion are better. The differences have statistical significance. (2)After short-distance radiotherapy, the levels of pain and xerostomia in patients have no significant difference to the ones in control group.(3)Patients have shoulder functional disturbance after RND; compared with the control group, the difference has statistical significance.(4)After treatments, patients' social and cognitional functions descend, while their emotional function upgrades. Compared with pretreatment condition, the differences have statistical significance.(5)Grade â…  and grade â…£ patients' speech don't significant change, the grade â…¢ patients' speech score become worse after treatments. All groups of patients have different speech scores. The differences have statistical significance.(6)QOL are variable in different grades, Grade â…  patients have the best ones, but grade â…£ patients have the worst. Grade I patients' QOL don't change significantly, while Grade â…¢ and â…£ patients' decrease much.Conclusions: QOL of patients with tongue cancer change differently after treatments. They have disfunctions in chewing, speech, shoulder function etc. We suggest that we should conserve the mandible completement, employ the reasonable RND which reserves cervical plexus, use positive speech restitution and psychological treatment to improve patients' QOL.