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Abstract
Context
In recent years, quality of life has become an increasingly common outcome measure for assessing the effectiveness of treatment and surgical techniques.
Objective
The aim of our systematic review is to explore changes in health-related quality of life in patients suffering from prostate cancer and treated by means of radical prostatectomy.
Evidence acquisition
We focus on studies in which EORTC QLQ-C30 and EORTC QLQ-PR25 questionnaires are used because these instruments have shown high internal and external validity in many studies and include questions grouped in cancer-specific scales. Following the application of exclusion and inclusion criteria, we select eight studies for qualitative synthesis.
Conclusions
Our results indicate that most quality of life scales do not present a large decline. However, prospective studies with detailed descriptions of methodology, and in particular descriptions of participants, are still needed before general conclusions can be drawn. Moreover, scoring of results in accordance with questionnaire guidelines is essential for the performance of meta-analysis.
Acknowledgements
The authors greatly appreciate the assistance of Mr Alex Tilbury in the preparation of the English language version of this article. The authors received no financial support for the research authorship and/or publication of this article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Tomasz Jurys
Tomasz Jurys is a physiotherapist conducting research into quality of life and physiotherapy in the prostate cancer population.
Jacek Durmala
Jacek Durmala is a Head of the Department of Rehabilitation in Medical University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland.