Physical, emotional and social dimension of quality of life among breast cancer women under chemotherapy

Psychological stress; decrease of physical, emotional and social function; sexual dysfunction and change of body image due to diagnose and cure of breast cancer influenced quality of life of patients and their family. This study was carried out in order to evaluation of physical, emotional and social dimensions of quality of life in breast cancer women undergoing chemotherapy

This study is Analytical – Descriptive - Cross sectional study that was carried out on fifty six breast cancer women undergoing chemotherapy in cancer institute center of Tehran Imam Khomeini hospital in 2006. The research samples were selected through simple sampling method according to the determined characteristics for the research samples. Data collection tools include quality of life breast cancer version (QOL – BC) and demographic questionnaire.

In physical dimension of QOL, 62/5% of patients had good QOL and 37/5% had moderate QOL and in emotional dimension of QOL, 42/9% had good QOL and 55/4% had moderate QOL and 1/8% had poor QOL; whereas in social dimension of QOL 21/4% had good QOL and 71/4% had moderate QOL and 7/1% had poor QOL. The total mean of QOL of patients in three dimensions of QOL (physical, emotional & social) was moderate. Also data analysis showed that there were a statistically significant correlation between age with emotional dimension of QOL (P=0/049) and between recent time of chemotherapy with physical dimension of QOL (P=0/000) and total quality of life (P=0/001).

The women are one of the most important branches of family and society so improvement of QOL in breast cancer women results in not only improvement of their survival but also results in increase of family QOL and more consistency of family and society construction therefore it is necessary that treatment team evaluate and improve QOL in this patients. In this field emphasis on role of nurses.