Rectal Cancer Quality of Life Statistics and Results

The quality of your life during cancer treatment is extremely important, to you and to us. Quality of life determines how well you are able to function and how good you feel during treatment.

It is well known that patients undergoing aggressive cancer treatment often experience a sharp deterioration in their quality of life. The ability to function normally decreases and treatment-related symptoms increase. Not being able to take a long walk outside or easily get dressed on their own, combined with symptoms like fatigue, nausea, and depression, can take a toll on how cancer patients feel and function. Ultimately, these things can lessen your hope in the fight against cancer.

At CTCA, we combine a variety of conventional and complementary therapies to help you maintain your quality of life during treatment. We use one of the most commonly used quality of life questionnaires in cancer research to monitor your functional abilities and symptoms. Our findings show that quality of life of CTCA patients often does not worsen and may even improve during the first three months of treatment.

Below are the results for a group of rectal cancer patients who were treated at CTCA.

Note: Higher scores in the functioning scales indicate a better Quality of Life.

Note: Lower scores in the symptom scales indicate better Quality of Life.

The above graph reflects results of 130 rectal cancer patients treated at Cancer Treatment Centers of America® between January 2001 and December 2008. A change of 10 to 20 points represents a moderate change. A change greater than 20 points represents a clinically significant change from the patient's perspective.

The top graph above shows the function scores of a group of 130 rectal cancer patients who were treated at CTCA between January 2001 and December 2008. The second graph shows the change in symptom levels experienced by the same group of patients. CTCA patients receive nutritional, spiritual, physical, naturopathic, and emotional support while they undergo aggressive chemotherapy.

These scores show that during their first three months of treatment, these patients maintained their quality of life except for global function, which showed a slight deterioration at three months.

To our knowledge, CTCA is the only network of cancer hospitals in the nation that incorporates quality of life measurements into its routine clinical program. We track each patient’s ability to perform the basic activities of daily living. We ask how satisfied they are with their lives, and we evaluate their overall sense of well-being. The knowledge we gain enables our care teams to monitor and address specific cancer related symptoms such as fatigue, insomnia, and pain.

CTCA invites each patient to participate in quality of life assessments both before and during treatment. We use the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire (QLQ-C30), which is one of the most reliable quality of life questionnaires in cancer research.

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