Dynamics of Long-Term Quality of Life After Treatment for Esophageal Cancer: A Community-Based Patient Study.

Purpose: To characterize the pattern of post-treatment quality of life (QoL) for esophageal cancer (EC) survivors and construct models predicting their long-term QoL.

Methods: On the basis of a randomized trial in an EC high-risk region in China, we interviewed 363 EC survivors and 25,245 permanent residents matched with the survivors on age, sex, and township as the baseline. QoL was measured using three-level version of European Quality of Life 5-Dimensions instrument. We constructed piecewise mixed models estimating the QoL of EC survivors that varied by age, sex, patient type, hospital level, and therapy to ascertain QoL determinants.

Results: The post-treatment QoL of EC survivors dropped by 15.7% within the first year and recovered by 9.3% between 1 and 9 years compared with the baseline. Therapy was found to be a determinant of QoL, and a series of therapy-specific models were fitted accordingly, which all showed the pattern of decreasing rapidly and recovering gradually. Endoscopic treatment had the least impact on post-treatment QoL (7.5% drop within 5 years) compared with esophagectomy (12.2% drop within 1 year) and chemoradiotherapy (37.8% drop within 2 years). The usual activities dimension showed the greatest impairment among those patients (34.4% drop within 1 year).

Conclusion: This community-based study described the long-term QoL trajectory for EC survivors after different therapeutic modalities and constructed models to predict therapy-specific QoL at different time points after treatment. It provided new insights into decision making in treatment for EC from the perspective of QoL protection, offering a convenient tool for estimating quality-adjusted life-years.