Quality of life assessment using EORTC QLQ questionnaires in the prostate cancer population treated with radical prostatectomy: a systematic review.

Context: In recent years, quality of life has become an increasingly common outcome measure for assessing the effectiveness of treatment and surgical techniques.

Objective: The aim of our systematic review is to explore changes in health-related quality of life in patients suffering from prostate cancer and treated by means of radical prostatectomy.

Evidence Acquisition: We focus on studies in which EORTC QLQ-C30 and EORTC QLQ-PR25 questionnaires are used because these instruments have shown high internal and external validity in many studies and include questions grouped in cancer-specific scales. Following the application of exclusion and inclusion criteria, we select eight studies for qualitative synthesis.

Conclusions: Our results indicate that most quality of life scales do not present a large decline. However, prospective studies with detailed descriptions of methodology, and in particular descriptions of participants, are still needed before general conclusions can be drawn. Moreover, scoring of results in accordance with questionnaire guidelines is essential for the performance of meta-analysis.