BREAST-Q Measurement of the Patient Perspective in Oncoplastic Breast Surgery: A Systematic Review

BACKGROUND:Since BREAST-Q was developed in 2009, it has been widely used by clinicians and researchers to capture information regarding health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and patient satisfaction related to breast surgery. Yet clinical guidelines regarding the use of BREAST-Q for assessment of success of surgery in women with breast cancer remain limited. To maximize the benefits of using BREAST-Q to inform clinical decision making, this systematic review aimed to identify and appraise current evidence on patient-reported outcomes (PROs) assessed by BREAST-Q associated with breast oncoplastic surgery. METHODS:A detailed search strategy was implemented and electronic databases searched include PubMed, MEDLINE, CINAHL, and PsycINFO. Review was limited to peer-reviewed studies published in English from 2009 to January 2018. Any interventional and observational studies that used BREAST-Q to assess PROs in the assessment of breast oncoplastic surgery were included. RESULTS:Fifty-four peer-reviewed articles met inclusion criteria. Fifty-three studies were observational, 1 study was interventional. Current comparative studies using BREAST-Q indicated that abdominal flap, buttock flap, or thigh flap reconstruction offered highest satisfaction with breast; contralateral prophylactic mastectomy with immediate reconstruction offered higher levels of satisfaction with breast, but poor postsurgical physical well-being. Silicone implant and no radiation therapy offered higher level satisfaction and HRQoL. CONCLUSIONS:Current evidence showed that BREAST-Q can effectively measure patient’s satisfaction and HRQoL in relation to different type of breast oncoplastic surgeries. BREAST-Q captured meaningful and reliable information from the patients’ perspective and may be useful for clinical decision making.This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CCBY), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.