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Turkish Journal of Medical Sciences

Abstract

Background/aim: Quality of life (QoL) is an important parameter that should be taken into account when assessing treatment efficacy in cancer patients. The FAST-FORWARD radiotherapy (RT) regimen (5-day schedule) for early-stage breast cancer has been reported by both physicians and patients to be associated with toxicity comparable to that of longer schedules. However, the impact of the addition of a tumor bed boost to ultrahypofractionated RT on patient QoL has not been extensively reported to date.

Materials and methods: QoL was assessed before and after RT and again 3 months later in 24 patients with early-stage breast cancer who underwent adjuvant ultrahypofractionated whole-breast RT (5 fractions of 5.2 Gy), followed by a tumor bed boost (3 fractions of 3 Gy). The EORTC QLQ-C30 and BR23 questionnaires were used to assess patient-reported outcomes (PROs). Patient religiosity and spirituality were evaluated using the QRFPC25 questionnaire.

Results: There were no significant differences in either the functional or symptom scores across the designated time points. Although an increase in global health status at 3 months was observed, there was significant variability in patient scores across all time points (Kendall’s W = 0.14; adjusted p-values for multiple comparisons ≥ 0.44). Breast symptom scores also increased over time, especially at 3 months (p = 0.032; χ2 = 6.87), but again this effect was small (Kendall’s W = 0.14, adjusted p ≥ 0.12). Patient spirituality and religiosity were not affected.

Conclusion: Overall, QoL, as well as patient spirituality and religiosity, remained stable over time in this FAST-FORWARD plus boost-treated cohort. Further investigation is required to validate these hypothesis-generating findings.

Author ORCID Identifier

EFROSYNI KYPRAIOU: 0009-0003-0370-9971

IOANNIS KOUKOURAKIS: 0000-0003-3143-8585

ANDROMACHI KOUGIOUMTZOPOULOU: 0000-0003-3576-5495

KALLIOPI PLATONI: 0000-0003-2977-7895

MARINA CHALKIA: 0000-0002-7796-6001

KYVELI ZOURARI: 0000-0003-0048-3973

EFSTATHIOS EFSTATHOPOULOS: 0000-0003-2747-3353

NIKOLAOS KELEKIS: 0000-0002-8958-4668

ANNA ZYGOGIANNI: 0000-0001-9698-6852

VASSILIS KOULOULIAS: 0000-0003-2082-7323

DOI

10.55730/1300-0144.6382

Keywords

breast cancer, hypofractionated radiotherapy, quality of life, questionnaires

First Page

1365

Last Page

1372

Publisher

The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye (TÜBİTAK)

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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