Study on the Health-related Quality of Life in Patients after Surgery for Malignant Bone Tumors

Aim: We conducted a study in China to assess the health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in patients treated on for malignant bone tumors after surgery, and investigate the possible determinants. Methods: The subjects were 120 patients surgically treated by amputation and limb-salvage for bone tumors during the period of June 2008 to June 2010. The Medical Outcomes Study Short Form 36 (SF-36) was employed to measure the HRQoL of all the patients before and after surgery. Results: With regard to the results of the general quality of life tool (SF-36), we observed a significant improvement of all the indexes of HRQoL after 6 months (p<0.05). PF, RP and BP scores showed significant increase between surgery after 6 and 12 months (p<0.05). The means of the HRQoL of bone tumor patients in our study were still much lower than those of general population in every domain, even 12 months after surgery. Logistic regression showed that female patients were found to have lower scores in physical component summary (PCS) than males (OR=0.64, 95% CI=0.35-0.89). Patients older than 15 years had lower scores in mental component summary (MCS) (OR=0.60, 95% CI=0.32-0.86). Ablative surgery was related to both lower MCS and PCS scores (For MCS, OR=0.54, 95% CI=0.31-0.83; for PCS, OR=0.43, 95% CI=0.25-0.73). Conclusion: Our study showed the treatment for bone tumor could greatly alter the HRQoL of patients. Age, sex and type of surgery were associated with physical or mental HRQoL after surgery.