[Quality of life in gastrointestinal cancer chemotherapy--from the standpoint of cancer chemotherapy].

Changes with time in quality of life (QOL) in patients who had undergone chemotherapy for various types of inoperable gastrointestinal diseases were investigated. The items studied included appetite, general feeling, sleep, fatigue, pain, familial understanding and cooperation, association with friends and colleagues, anxiety concerning the disease, expectations concerning treatment and daily life activities. These 10 items were recorded by the patients for 2-4 weeks in five grades by a combination of the analog scale and category scale methods, with the exception of association with friends and colleagues, which showed few entries, the following relations with antitumor effects were seen at the following average QOL values in the total scores for the nine items: In PR cases (n = 7), 15.6 before treatment, 19.7 during treatment and 14.8 after treatment; in NC cases (n = 11), 19.4 before treatment, 20 during treatment and 19.1 after treatment; and in PD cases (n = 4), 17.0 before treatment, 22.8 during treatment, and 22.8 after treatment. The above 10 items were surveyed simultaneously with a face scale (Arthritis and Rheumatism, Vol. 29, No,7, 906-909, 1986). Five faces considered appropriate for a five-stage evaluation were used, and the Spearman coefficient of correlation was calculated with a combination of all of the above 10 items. The face scale showed correlation in the sequence of general feeling sleep greater than activities of daily life greater than anxiety concerning the disease greater than fatigue. As a result of a nonmetric type component analysis, the data could be reduced to four dimensions with appetite, fatigue, activities of daily life, general feeling and face as the first principal component; expectations concerning treatment, understanding and cooperation of family and association with friends as the second principal component; anxiety concerning the disease and sleep as the third principal component; and pain as the fourth principal component (cumulative contribution rate: 82.38). The first principal component was investigated using a logistic regression model. As a result, the face scale could be explained by the general feeling and the daily life activities. The weight was general feeling 3 and daily life activities 1. Therefore, it appears possible to utilize sufficiently the face scale in QOL surveys of cancer patients.