Quality of life in elderly patients with breast cancer after mastectomy evaluated using the short form of the Medical Outcomes Study questionnaire (MOS-SF-36)

Background: Breast cancer (BC) is a common malignancy among women and the second or third leading cause of cancer-related death in Western countries. BC is common in the elderly, because the risk of getting cancer increases with the age. BC and its treatment can impact the quality of life (QoL) of women in several ways, including potential psychological and physical dysfunctions, because in the mind of each the patient, breast surgery remains a destroying surgery. The first effort of physicians to assess the consequences of cancer treatment was performed by Karnofsky in 1948. Since then, many other assessment tools have been proposed, including the Medical Outcomes Study (MOS) questionnaire. The aim of this study was to evaluate the sort-term postoperative health-related QoL of elderly (>65 years) and younger patients (≤65 years) who underwent mastectomy for BC using the MOS questionnaire. Patients and methods: We reviewed the medical records of 117 women with advanced BC who required mastectomy. Unfortunately, only 31 (26.5%) patients accepted the short-form (36 items) of the MOS questionnaire (SF-MOS-36) administration (the day before discharge after surgery) and completely asked to the items related to their temporary psychosocial distress and functional limitation after mastectomy. There were 12 (38.7%) elderly and 19 (61.3%) younger patients, with an overall median age of 61 years (range 46-86 years). In the SF-MOS-36 questionnaire, 8 groups of items are designed to obtain information about bodily pain, emotional role functioning, general health perceptions, mental health, physical functioning, physical role functioning, social role functioning, and vitality. Because the data obtained had a non-Gaussian distribution, the non-parametric Mann-Whitney U test was used to evaluate the statistical significance between groups. A p-value<0.05 was considered significant. Results: The results are reported in the Table. In general, the healthy-related QoL perceived by young and elderly patients assessed by analyzing the results of the SF-MOS-36 questionnaire was similar. However, the scores related to social role functioning and vitality were significantly different between groups. Conclusion: Older patients with BC who underwent mastectomy seem to be more susceptible than younger against social problems and their vitality after surgery. However, these preliminary results need to be confirmed by studies on a larger sample of patients.