Breast Reconstruction After Breast Cancer Patients Quality Of Life And Satisfaction Surveys

The goal of the study is to investigate the health-related quality of life (HRQL) and patient satisfaction of Chinese breast cancer patients who underwent breast reconstruction, either immediate or delayed, after mastectomy.Validated Simplified Chinese Edition of SF-36Health Survey was used to evaluate respondents’ HRQL and a study specific questionnaire was used to evaluate respondents’ satisfaction, including issues on cosmetic outcome and procedure-related aspects.17women with immediate reconstruction (IR),20with delayed reconstruction (DR) and19with mastectomy only were enrolled. Scores of the questionnaire were compared with age and educational level matched healthy women with different occupations.In all8dimensions of SF-36, no significant difference was found between the mastectomy group, the IR group and the healthy control group; scores of the DR group in4dimensions out of8were significantly higher than the healthy control. The DR group also was superior to the IR group in3dimensions. There is no significant difference between the scores with regard to the satisfaction of the2reconstruction groups. Within every aspect of cosmetic outcome, the score of either reconstruction group was found to be significant higher than that of the mastectomy group, and scores of both IR and DR groups were comparable with that of the healthy control. Postoperative radiotherapy can negatively affect the appearance.There was no untoward impact that IR and DR had on HRQL. Breast reconstruction could be of advantage to the rehabilitation after mastectomy for breast cancer patients, especially to the improvement of breast appearance. The DR group’s scores of SF-36was superior to that of the IR group, indicating assessment of patients’ psychological status before surgery was necessary. Radiotherapy had a negative impact on cosmetic outcome. Breast reconstruction using different methods can result in similar patient satisfaction.