Abstract
The purpose of this study is to evaluate postoperative bowel dysfunction in rectal cancer patients who had a low anterior resection (LAR) in the postoperative course period, and to examine the relationship between postoperative bowel dysfunction and self-esteem.
This survey was conducted by interviewing with questionnaires 60 outpatients within a post-LAR 5-year period.
The content of the questionnaire consisted of basic attribution, postoperative bowel dysfunction, self-esteem and analysis of the data was performed by the Mann-Whitney U Test and Kruskal-Wallis Test, and Pearson's product-moment correlation coefficient was used.
The result shows that, for postoperative bowel dysfunction after LAR, the less than 1-year group suffered significantly more than the 2-to-5 year and 1-to-2 year group (p<0.05). However, post-operative bowel dysfunction in the 2-to-5 year group tended to be higher than that of the 1-to-2 year group, which means that the patients suffered from postoperative bowel dysfunction 2 years after the operation. As for the relationship between self-esteem and postoperative bowel dysfunction, self-esteem was significantly lower in the 2-to-5 year group (p<0.05).
These findings suggest that LAR patients had postoperative bowel dysfunction 2 years after the operation and their self-esteem may also be affected by this in the 2-to-5 year group.
