Abstract
To assess how to influence the four indexes of the patient's QOL status, such as sociability, psychological status, somatic discomfort and physical function, by giving information about their cancer, QOL studies (Functional Living Index-Cancer: FLIC) for 75 patients with head and neck cancer were done approximately every two weeks from admission to discharge.
Sociability (P=0.04), psychological status (P=0.003) and somatic discomfort (P=0.0001) had improved by the time of discharge.
Those patients who were informed about their cancer maintained a better QOL status of sociability (P=0.03) and psychological status (P=0.03) than did those who were not informed.
Multiple regression techniques were used to determine any factor, including the information about cancer, which correlate sociabilty and psychological status. The information about cancer (P=0.008) and surgical treatment (P=0.040) were correlated with improvement of sociability.
But only surgical treatment was correlated with psychological status (P=0.048). This result suggested that the information about cancer which might lead patients to understand the necessity of surgery, could not relieve patients from psychological distress after surgery.
