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Quality of life in cancer patients—a comparison of inpatient, outpatient, and rehabilitation settings

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Abstract

Purpose

The aim of this study was to compare quality of life (QoL) data from cancer patients in different clinical settings with data from the general population.

Methods

A sample of 4020 German cancer patients (1735 inpatients, 1324 outpatients, 961 participants in rehabilitation treatment) was tested with the EORTC QLQ-C30.

Results

Compared with the general population, cancer patients reported markedly worse QoL. There were clinically significant differences on all 15 scales of the EORTC QLQ-C30 (except one). For the sum score, averaging across 13 scales, the effect size of the difference between cancer patients and the general population was d = 1.16. Inpatients reported the greatest detriments to QoL, followed by the rehabilitation patients and the outpatients (mean sum scores 68.6, 71.0, and 72.3, respectively, compared with 89.2 in the general population). Mean scores for different groups of cancer sites are given separately for the three settings.

Conclusion

The detriments to QoL were stronger than in comparable studies conducted on data from clinical trials. Since these detriments were found in all three settings to a similar degree, health care providers should offer their services not only to inpatients but to outpatients and patients treated in rehabilitation clinics as well. The data can be used for QoL comparisons of assessments from different settings.

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Acknowledgements

We thank all the healthcare teams that assisted in data collection at all of the participating study centers.

Funding

This study was funded by a grant from the German Cancer Aid (Grant No: 107465) within the psychosocial oncology funding priority program.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Medical Psychology and Medical Sociology, University of Leipzig, Philipp-Rosenthal-Str. 55, 04103, Leipzig, Germany

    Andreas Hinz, Elmar Brähler, Kristina Geue, Heide Götze & Anja Mehnert

  2. Department of Psychooncology, Clinic of Cancer Rehabilitation UKF Reha gGmbH, University Clinic Centre Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany

    Joachim Weis

  3. Department of Medical Psychology and Psychotherapy, Medical Sociology and Rehabilitation Sciences, and Comprehensive Cancer Center Mainfranken, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany

    Hermann Faller

  4. Department of Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy, University Medical Center Mainz, Mainz, Germany

    Elmar Brähler

  5. Department and Outpatient Clinic of Medical Psychology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany

    Martin Härter, Holger Schulz & Uwe Koch

  6. Division of Psychooncology, Department for Psychosomatic and General Clinical Medicine, University Hospital Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany

    Monika Keller

  7. Department of Medical Biometry and Epidemiology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany

    Karl Wegscheider

Authors
  1. Andreas Hinz
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  2. Joachim Weis
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  9. Uwe Koch
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Andreas Hinz.

Ethics declarations

This study was approved by the ethics committees of all participating centers.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Hinz, A., Weis, J., Faller, H. et al. Quality of life in cancer patients—a comparison of inpatient, outpatient, and rehabilitation settings. Support Care Cancer 26, 3533–3541 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00520-018-4211-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00520-018-4211-4

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