ObjectivesQuality of life has been the focus of increasing interest in oncology. QoL assessment instruments implicitly assume that each QoL domain has the same meaning for each patient. The objective of this study was to analyze the importance of and the satisfaction with QoL domains and to analyze the relationship between the two.MethodsA sample of 308 breast cancer survivors was examined twice with a three-month time interval. The women completed the two QoL questionnaires Questions of Life Satisfaction, which measures participants' (...) satisfaction with eight QoL domains and the subjective importance of those domains to them, and the EORTC QLQ-C30. A sample of 1,143 women from the general population served as controls.ResultsCompared with the general population sample, the patients were less satisfied with their health and more satisfied with all other QoL domains. The subjective importance of health was lower in the patients' sample. Satisfaction with health and importance of health were slightly positively correlated. The effect of QoL domain importance on general QoL was small, and interaction effects between domain importance and satisfaction on the prediction of global QoL were negligible.ConclusionIn addition to satisfaction with QoL dimensions, the subjective importance of these dimensions is relevant for psychooncological research and treatment. Health is not the only relevant QoL domain in breast cancer survivors, other domains such as finances also deserve health care providers' attention. (shrink)

Background: Multiple studies have shown that people who have experienced a serious health problem such as an injury tend to overrate the quality of health they had before that event. The main objective of this study was to test whether the phenomenon of respondents overrating their past health can also be observed in people from the general population. A second aim was to test whether habitual optimism is indeed focused on events in the future.Method: A representatively selected community sample from (...) Leipzig, Germany was examined. Respondents were asked to assess their current health, their past health, and their expected future health on a 0–100 scale. In addition, the study participants completed several questionnaires on specific aspects of physical and mental health.Results: Respondents of all age groups assessed their health as having been better in the past than it was at present. Moreover, they also assessed their earlier state of health more positively than people 5 years younger did their current state. Habitual optimism was associated with respondents having more positive expectations of how healthy they will be in 5 years time, but the correlation with their assessments of their current health was nearly as high.Conclusion: Highly positive scores of retrospectively assessed health among people who have experienced a health problem cannot totally be accounted for by a response to that health problem. (shrink)

Objectives: Fatigue is a frequent debilitating symptom associated with cancer. However, scientific data on cancer-related fatigue is scarce in developing nations. This work examines psychometric properties of the multidimensional fatigue inventory and analyzes the level of fatigue among Ethiopian patients with cancer in comparison with data from Germany.Methods: A sample of 256 patients with cancer drawn from a hospital in Ethiopia was examined with the MFI-20 and the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life questionnaire. A (...) comparative sample of 780 German patients with cancer served as the control.Results: The MFI-20 scales and total score showed acceptable reliability with a considerable convergent validity between MFI-20 and the EORTC QLQ-C30 fatigue scale. The Ethiopian patients with cancer reported higher levels of fatigue than the German patients. Analyses of variance showed that Ethiopian patients with cancer who were illiterate, having advanced cancer, and those who did not receive either surgery or chemotherapy reported especially high levels of fatigue.Conclusion: The MFI-20 is a fairly reliable and valid instrument to be used with Amharic speaking patients with cancer. The high level of fatigue in these patients implies that appropriate cancer care is needed in developing countries. (shrink)