Associations between Adult Primary Brain Tumor Survivors’ Behavioral Executive Functions, Health Related Quality of Life and their Caregivers’ Health Related Quality : A cross-sectional study

ABSTRACT

The present study focused on adult primary brain tumor (PBT) survivors’ caregivers. The main objective was to study associations between PBT survivors’ health-related quality of life (HRQOL), their behavioral executive functions (EF) and their caregivers’ HRQOL. Forty PBT survivors of PBT and 37 caregivers (mostly patient’s spouses 81.08%; n = 30) participated in the study. PBT survivors completed a cancer related Quality of Life (QOL) questionnaire. Caregivers completed informant rated HRQOL and behavioral EF reports relating to PBT survivors and a self-rated HRQOL questionnaire relating to themselves. Correlational and multiple regression analyses were conducted. No associations were found between caregivers’ physical HRQOL and PBT survivors’ HRQOL nor behavioral EF. Analyses yielded several significant correlations between caregivers’ mental HRQOL and variables pertaining to PBT survivors’ HRQOL and behavioral EF. Multiple regression analyses showed that caregivers’ mental HRQOL is predicted by PBT survivors’ mental HRQOL, global cancer-related QOL scores and global behavioral EF scores. This study provides evidence suggesting that during the survivorship phase, at an average of 3.67 (SD = 2.31) years following treatment for a PBT, caregivers mental HRQOL is linked to PBT survivors’ long-term effects. These findings shed some light regarding post-cancer care for both PBT survivors and their caregivers.

KEYWORDS:

• Primary brain tumors
• survivors
• health-related quality of life
• caregivers

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Patrick Raynal for his advice regarding the statistical analyses. We wish to thank participants, families, and informants for their useful implication in this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Authors’ contribution

JB, PA and DLG contributed to the study conception and design. PM, VR, RS and MD recruited participants. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by NC, AR and JB. JB supervised the project. NC and JB wrote the first version of the manuscript. All authors commented on the manuscript.

Consent to participate

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Consent to publish

Participants signed informed consent regarding publishing their data.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, NC, upon reasonable request.

Ethics approval

The present study received French regulatory ethical approval (Comité de Protection des Personnes Ouest II, n°2015/27, ID-RCB n°2015-A01192-47) which includes the International Review Board Authorization (N°NCT02693405).

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the French National Cancer Institute (INCa) (grant number SHSESP14- 14-041).