Quality of life after breast cancer surgery.

All patients (N = 41) who participated in a randomized clinical trial in the Leiden University Hospital comparing mastectomy to tumorectomy have been studied with respect to their quality of life 11 months (+/- 5) after surgery. The body image of patients is more severely impaired after mastectomy than after tumorectomy (P less than .01). The studied groups did not differ, as has been suggested, with respect to fear of recurrence and death. These fears, however, turned out to be inversely related to the age of the patients (r = -.34, P = .02).