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Quality of Life in Women with Ovarian Cancer

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Advances in Diagnosis and Management of Ovarian Cancer

Abstract

Ovarian cancer and its treatments can have profound and diverse impacts on patients’ quality of life. Within research contexts, “health-related quality of life” (HRQL) is used as an umbrella term to encompass and assess all of these impacts. Specific impacts include physical symptoms and functioning impairment caused by the disease, and the psychological distress these cause, alongside the shock of the diagnosis and ongoing fear and uncertainty about the future. Distress may also arise after surgery and chemotherapy due to the side effects and physical changes that these treatments can cause. Some side effects may persist long after treatment ends, such as psychosexual issues and peripheral neuropathy. Standardised assessment of these issues, whether separately as specific patient-reported outcomes (PROs) or collectively under the umbrella term HRQL, using validated questionnaires in clinical trials can provide evidence to guide improvements in clinical practice. Such data can also inform patients about possible treatment impacts and assist patients to make treatment decisions. Standardised assessment is also useful in clinical practice, where an individual patient’s responses can facilitate communication with her clinician about her symptoms (physical and psychological) and their impact on her quality of life. In this chapter, we introduce key terminology and describe how ovarian cancer and its treatments affect patients’ HRQL in terms of the disease and treatment-related symptoms, functioning impairments, and psychological impact. Approaches to assessing HRQL in ovarian cancer research and clinical practice are described and an overview is provided of ongoing ovarian cancer clinical trials that include HRQL endpoints.

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Correspondence to Rachel Campbell BPsych, MSc (ClinPsych), PhD .

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Campbell, R., King, M.T., Lee, Y.C., Mileshkin, L., Tait, MA., Rutherford, C. (2022). Quality of Life in Women with Ovarian Cancer. In: Farghaly, S.A. (eds) Advances in Diagnosis and Management of Ovarian Cancer. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09169-8_13

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