Socio-demographic Characteristics and Quality of Life of Head and Neck Cancer Patients of Bangladesh

This is the first kind of study to assess the quality of life (QoL) of head and neck cancer (HNC) patients of Bangladesh. The current study was used a short-term prospective design and a repeated-measure method to evaluate the QoL of HNC patients before and 2 months after initiating treatment. A semi-structured questionnaire along with the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life (EORTC-QLQ-C30) module was used in this study. The data was gathered from 102 newly diagnosed HNC patients who had attended the outdoor departments of three tertiary cancer care hospitals, namely the National Institute of Cancer Research and Hospital (NICRH), the National Institute of ENT (NIENT), and Dhaka Dental College and Hospital (DDCH) of Bangladesh. The raw data was linearly converted into 0-100 score ranges according to the EORTC-QLQ-C30 guidelines. The results demonstrated that the overall quality of life of HNC remained almost severely problematic at follow-up. Financial difficulty was one of the factors found to have a significant effect on the QoL of HNC patients. The highest level of dropout among HNC patients was observed during follow-up. The highest level of death rate was also observed among HNC patients in Bangladesh, considering a short-term follow-up (i.e., within 3 months of diagnosis) study in this region.