Quality of life of Danish colorectal cancer patients with and without a stoma

As part of a psychosocial intervention study, we wanted to prospectively assess the quality of life of colorectal cancer patients who were given a stoma at the time of their initial operation for cancer or later and those whose initial stoma was removed.

A total of 249 colorectal cancer patients were recruited and responded to a questionnaire 3, 6, 12 and 24 months after the initial operation (26–35% had a stoma during follow-up).

Although most of the differences between stoma and non-stoma patients failed to reach significance, 22 out of 27 variables indicated a poorer quality of life for those with a stoma. Patients who currently had a stoma had significantly higher levels of depression (p = 0.013), poorer social functioning (p = 0.0085) and more problems with body image (p = 0.0001), future perspectives (p = 0.0058), micturition (p = 0.018) and side effects from chemotherapy (p = 0.008), but fewer problems with constipation (p = 0.034) than non-stoma patients. Male patients with a stoma had more sexual problems than males without a stoma (p = 0.015). Among those with a current stoma, quality of life seemed poorer among those whose stoma was made during follow-up compared with those with an initial stoma.

Trends suggested that having a stoma led to poorer scores in most aspects of quality of life and that having a stoma made some time after the initial operation was more distressing than having a stoma made during the primary cancer operation.