Supplementary Material for: Health-Related Quality of Life in Patients with Small Intestine Neuroendocrine Tumors

Background: The prevalence of small intestine neuroendocrine tumors (SI-NETs) is increasing. Disease progression is often slow and treatment options and long-term survival rates have improved, but little is known about health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in these patients. Objective: To assess HRQoL and its predictors in SI-NET patients receiving contemporary treatments. Methods: We measured HRQoL with 15D and SF-36 questionnaires in 134 SI-NET patients and compared the 15D results to those of an age- and gender-standardized sample of the general population (n = 1,153). In the patients, we studied the impact of treatments, Ki-67, liver metastases, circulating tumor markers, comorbidities, and/or socioeconomic factors on HRQoL with linear regression analysis. Results: The mean disease duration of the patients was 81 (4–468) months, 91% had metastatic disease, and 79% received somatostatin analog treatment. Hepatic tumor load was 0% in 44.8%, 25% in 11.2%, respectively. Mean fP-CgA and S-5HIAA concentrations were 15 (1.3–250) and 344 (24–7,470) nmol/L, respectively. Overall, HRQoL was significantly impaired in patients compared to controls (15D score 0.864 ± 0.105 vs. 0.905 ± 0.028, p p p p n = 85) compared to patients without (n = 49) impaired excretion (0.828 vs. 0.933, p Conclusions: Despite contemporary treatments, SI-NET patients have severely impaired HRQoL, including diarrhea, sleep, depression, vitality, and sexual activity.