Background: Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women in Sudan. Assessing the quality of life in cancer patients contribute to increase the value of treatment and could play a role as prognostic factor within medical parameters. This research presents the outcome of quality of life in Sudanese women with breast cancer depending on international and regional result.

 

Objective: The purpose of this study was to assess the quality of life of Sudanese women with breast cancer who came to Khartoum Oncology Hospital.

 

Methods: The study was a hospital based cross-sectional research conducted on 114 breast cancer patients from November2017 to December, 2017. A standardized questionnaire of European organization for research and treatment of cancer QoL questionnaires QLQ-C30 (Quality of Life Questionnaire-Cancer 30) and QLQ-BR23 (Quality of Life Questionnaire- Breast Cancer 23 used after little modification according to the researcher’s participants acceptance. The data collection was piloted (not considered at the final result) to assess the questionnaire acceptance, clarity and completion time and no modification were made. The data analysis was made by using SPSS version 19, most of the scales have excellent internal consistency except for social functioning item has low internal consistency. Analysis of variance (ANOVAs) was performed to examine the relationship between independent variables and functional and symptom scales of both questionnaires.

 

Results: The participants mean age was 48.2( SD=12.199 ).Sudanese patients with breast cancer have high Functional score and lower symptom score in both EORTC QLQ-C30 and the EORTC BR-23 scores. Most of the socio-demographic variables, except the Age of participants, did not show significant association with QoL of the participants.

 

Conclusion: The quality of life among Sudanese women with breast cancer is good in compared to many countries .But measures should be taken to improve their financial support.

 

Keywords: Quality of life, breast cancer, Functional scales and Symptomatic scale