Health-Related Quality of Life in Prostate Cancer Survivors: Implications for Nursing Care

Background: The quality of life of prostate cancer survivors is influenced by various personal and disease-related factors including age and time passed from cancer diagnosis. Identification of these factors can have implications for improving nursing care strategies during recovery from cancer. Also, there is a lack of knowledge of health-related quality of life (HRQoL) among Iranian prostate cancer (PCa) survivors. Objective: This study aimed to describe HRQoL among Iranian PCa survivors and compare it with age at cancer diagnosis and time passed from it. Methodology: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 186 PCa survivors at the radiotherapy department of a large referral teaching hospital in an urban area of Iran. The demographic characteristics form, EORTC QLQ-C30, and EORTC QLQ - PR25 questionnaires were used to gather data. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used for data analysis via SPSS. Results: The cancer survivors with older age at cancer diagnosis had significantly lower physical (p = 0.001) and sexual function (p = 009), and higher social function (p = 0.03), fatigue (p = 0.02), dyspnea (p = 0.008), urinary (p = 0.007) symptoms and financial difficulties (p = 0.03). Also, statistically significant differences between time passed from cancer diagnosis and physical function (p = 0.03), urinary (p = 0.001) and bowel (p = 0.02) symptoms and urinary aid problems (p = 0.006) were reported. Conclusions: Nurses need to pay more attention to age at cancer diagnosis and time passed from it among PCa survivors during follow-up care programs in order to improve their HRQoL.