QUALITY-OF-LIFE ASSESSMENT FOLLOWING ESOPHAGECTOMY

Of 235 patients who had undergone an oesophagectomy for the treatment of malignant primary disease between 1982 and 1988, 80 (64 males and 16 females with a mean age of 54.6 years) were reassessed for "quality of life" since undergoing surgery. Three standardized questionnaires were used: general physical complaints (CL), satisfaction with life (SL) and psychosocial stress (BCP), as well as data from a representative random group of the normal population (n = 1761 (CL)), 48 healthy persons (SL) and a group of 788 patients (BCP) with varying types of malignancies. As expected, the score for CL was significantly higher for the patients than the randomized controls (23.5 vs 14.3; P < 0.001), but lower than that of cardiac (30.2) and psychiatric patients (30.0; P < 0.001). For quality of life, the post-oesophagectomy patients scored 68.17 compared with 56.75 (P < 0.001) for the healthy controls. The main psychosocial stress was less in the areas of anxiety and depression than in a loss of social activity and impairment of physical capacity.