Department of General Surgery, Fourth Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University, Harbin City, Heilongjiang Province, China , llq12351@163.com
Abstract: (173 Views)
Background: Chemotherapy is often prescribed for breast cancer treatment; however, how it affects disease-free survival, quality of life, and recurrence rates remains inadequately defined. This study aims at investigating relationships between chemotherapy and disease-free survival, quality of life, and recurrence percentages among breast cancer patients. Materials and Methods: This was a retrospective chart review of 350 breast cancer patients who underwent surgery between 2015 and 2022 at a university medical center. The participants received treatment such that the target group consisted of those receiving chemotherapy (n=105) and those not receiving chemotherapy (n=245). Comparison of demographic data such as tumor characteristics and treatment details between the two study groups will be carried out. Cox proportional hazards models as well as multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and logistic regression will be used to evaluate disease-free survival, quality of life, and recurrence. Follow up assessment was done at 12 months. Results: Chemotherapy patients were significantly less likely to experience disease recurrence than those not exposed to Chemotherapy (HR=0.65, p=0.02) or local recurrence (OR=0.42, p=0.01). Patients who had chemotherapy again had lower physical and social functioning scores compared with those who were not given chemotherapy (p=0.04 and p=0.02, respectively). Chemotherapy was associated with an increased 12-month survival probability (92.5% vs 85.1%, p=0.03). Conclusion: Chemotherapy has an association with improved disease-free survival and decreased local recurrence in breast cancer patients, but it also adversely affects life quality, particularly specific aspects such as physical and social functions. These results emphasize that balance between benefit of treatment and quality of life should be carefully considered in treatment of breast cancer and that further investigations must occur for optimizing chemotherapy usage.
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