QUALITY OF LIFE AMONG PREINVASIVE & INVASIVE CERVICAL CANCER IN MALAYSIA

Objective: this study aims to determine the quality of life (qol) of malaysian women based on their physical and mental scores and correlates with age and cervical disease severity. methods: this is across-sectional study from nov 2006 till dec 2007 from participating gynecology-oncology outpatient and in patient’s wards. qol interviews used the sf-36 questionnaires. main domains were the physical composite scores (pcs) and the mental composite scores (mcs). results: a total of 396 participated in the study. mean respondents age were 53.31 ± 11.21 years, educated till secondary level (39.4%), malays (44.2%) with mean marriage duration of 27.73 ± 12.12 years. among pre-invasive diseases, the cervical intra epithelial neoplasia (cin) 1 was the highest in percentage of cases (8.1%). among invasive cancer, stage 1 cancer was highest (31.1%), followed with stage 2 (28.3%), stage 3 (7.3%) and stage 4 cancers (5.8%). pcs scores are highest among the pre-invasive and stage 1 cancer (f=4.357; p<0.0001) and influenced by age and income. mcs were not significantly influenced by age or stage of cervical diseases (f= 1.393; p=0.206) but the regression model showed that amount spent on health care was a significant factor. conclusion: cervical diseases posed a substantial cause in reducing qol with increasing age and disease severity. this disability can be reduced with early screening and intervention to prevent disease progression. reducing disease burden play a role to improve qol among at risk women before developing late stages of disease