Assessment of postoperative quality of life: comparative study between laparoscopic and minimum incision endoscopic radical prostatectomies.

Background: To investigate the changes in postoperative quality of life (QOL) in patients with prostate cancer who underwent laparoscopic radical prostatectomy (LRP) or minimum incision endoscopic radical prostatectomy (MIE-RP).

Methods: This study included a total of 115 Japanese patients with clinically localized prostate cancer who underwent either LRP or MIE-RP and were subsequently followed for more than 12 months. Before and 12 months after surgery, health-related QOL and disease-specific QOL were assessed using the Medical Outcomes Study 8-item Short-Form Health Survey (SF-8) and the Expanded Prostate Index Composite (EPIC), respectively.

Results: LRP and MIE-RP were performed in 57 and 58 patients, respectively, and there were no significant differences in major clinicopathological parameters between these two groups. There were no significant differences in perioperative outcomes between the two groups except for the estimated blood loss, which was lower in the LRP group. There were no significant differences between the two groups in the preoperative and postoperative all-scale scores of the SF-8 survey. Of the fourteen scores evaluated by the EPIC survey, postoperative scores for urinary summary, sexual summary, urinary function, urinary incontinence and sexual function were significantly worse than these preoperative scores in both LRP and MIE-RP groups, while there were no significant differences between the two groups in the preoperative and postoperative all-scale scores of the EPIC survey.

Conclusions: The postoperative QOL status in patients undergoing MIE-RP appeared to be equivalent to that in those undergoing LRP.