Evaluation of Quality of Life and Menopausal Symptoms in Women with Breast Cancer in Northern Iran

Breast cancer is one of the most common cancers in women and includes approximately 23% of all kinds of cancer. The main reason for evaluation of quality of life (QOL) is to access informations which result in improvement of treatment and health status of patients. The main purpose of this study was to determine menopause symptoms and QOLin postmenopausal patients with breast cancer. Eighty postmenopausal women with history of breast cancer and aged between 45-65 years who were referred to Shahid Rajayie and Ayatollah Rouhani health care centers, Babol University of medical sciences, for menopausal symptoms, filled an informed consent, a checklist including menopause symptoms and the European organization for research and treatment of cancer quality of life (EORTC QLQ-C30) questionnaire. Based on scoring criteria, each of the scale scores in the mentioned questionnaires was determined using SPSS 18 software. In this study, hot flashes and anxiety were the most prevalent symptoms in women with breast cancer. QOL in 36.3% of patients was evaluated as good. 6.3% of patients had physical dysfunction, 2.5% had role dysfunction, 16.3% had excitement dysfunction, 2.5 % had cognitive dysfunction and 3.8% had social dysfunction. The worst condition was related to the economic impact of the disease with 25% of patients suffering from this condition.The QOL of patients with a history of breast cancer was better in comparison to other studied societies with a similar culture.