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Quality of life of patients more than 1 year after surgery for thyroid cancer

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Abstract

Purpose

Patients with thyroid cancer are often assumed to have no quality of life (QOL) impairments after treatment because of thyroid cancer’s good prognosis. However, the QOL implications of surgical complications and the necessity to take lifelong medication are seldom assessed.

Methods

Patients who had surgery due to thyroid cancer at the University Medical Center Mainz between 2010 and 2015 and who had calcium or parathyroid hormone levels below the reference values immediately following surgery were eligible for this study. QOL was assessed using the EORTC QLQ-C30 and the thyroid cancer module EORTC QLQ-THY34. Multiple logistic regression was used to determine factors associated with a worse QOL compared with a general population.

Results

A total of 75 (56%) of 134 eligible patients participated in the study. Patients with persistent/prolonged calcium or vitamin D intake reported worse QOL in the domains of global health, physical functioning, role functioning, emotional functioning, and insomnia than patients without current intake. Current calcium and vitamin D intake, higher education, living with a partner, and age had an effect on the odds of having worse QOL than the age- and sex-adjusted general population.

Conclusion

Prolonged calcium and/or vitamin D intake are negatively associated with certain domains of QOL in thyroid cancer patients who are at least 1 year post surgery. Assessment of calcium and vitamin D and diagnosis of hypoparathyroidism are therefore important for the follow-up of thyroid cancer survivors since it may affect their QOL.

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Funding

This study was funded by the MAIFOR program of the Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, Germany.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Medical Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Informatics (IMBEI), University Medical Center Mainz, Mainz, Germany

    Matthias Büttner & Susanne Singer

  2. University Cancer Centre, Mainz, Germany

    Matthias Büttner, Susanne Singer & Thomas J. Musholt

  3. Department of Medical Psychology and Medical Sociology, University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany

    Andreas Hinz

  4. Section of Endocrine Surgery, Department of General, Visceral and Transplantation Surgery, University Medical Center Mainz, Mainz, Germany

    Thomas J. Musholt

Authors
  1. Matthias Büttner
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  2. Andreas Hinz
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  3. Susanne Singer
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  4. Thomas J. Musholt
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. All authors participated in drafting or critically revising the manuscript, and all authors’ approved the final version of the manuscript for submission.

Matthias Büttner and Thomas Musholt contributed to the acquisition and interpretation of data.

Matthias Büttner contributed to the analysis of the data.

Matthias Büttner will use this paper for his PhD thesis.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Matthias Büttner.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

All procedures involving human participants in this study were performed in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

This study was approved by the Ethics-Committee of the Landesärztekammer Rhineland-Palatinate (# 837.238.16).

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Büttner, M., Hinz, A., Singer, S. et al. Quality of life of patients more than 1 year after surgery for thyroid cancer. Hormones 19, 233–243 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42000-020-00186-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42000-020-00186-x

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