Study on the Health-related Quality of Life in Patients after Surgery for Malignant Bone Tumors

Aim: We conducted a study in China to assess the health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in patients treatedon for malignant bone tumors after surgery, and investigate the possible determinants.
Methods: The subjectswere 120 patients surgically treated by amputation and limb-salvage for bone tumors during the period of June2008 to June 2010. The Medical Outcomes Study Short Form 36 (SF-36) was employed to measure the HRQoLof all the patients before and after surgery.
Results: With regard to the results of the general quality of life tool(SF-36), we observed a significant improvement of all the indexes of HRQoL after 6 months (p<0.05). PF, RP andBP scores showed significant increase between surgery after 6 and 12 months (p<0.05). The means of the HRQoLof bone tumor patients in our study were still much lower than those of general population in every domain,even 12 months after surgery. Logistic regression showed that female patients were found to have lower scoresin physical component summary (PCS) than males (OR=0.64, 95% CI=0.35-0.89). Patients older than 15 yearshad lower scores in mental component summary (MCS) (OR=0.60, 95% CI=0.32-0.86). Ablative surgery wasrelated to both lower MCS and PCS scores (For MCS, OR=0.54, 95% CI=0.31-0.83; for PCS, OR=0.43, 95%CI=0.25-0.73).
Conclusion: Our study showed the treatment for bone tumor could greatly alter the HRQoL ofpatients. Age, sex and type of surgery were associated with physical or mental HRQoL after surgery.