Validation of QLQ-BR23 Questionnaire in Measurement of Quality of Life of Breast Cancer Patients: A Pilot Study

Abstract

Background: As of 2012, breast cancer accounts for 59% prevalence rate in Asia. The WHOidentifies breast cancer as leading cancer in Indonesian women with 48.998 cases in 2014 with 48.9%incidence rate as well as 21.4%mortality rate out of 92.220 total deaths caused by cancers. Based on a research done in the US initial diagnosis has evoked a state of shock fear and disbelief for the patients.Mostwomen experience at least some psychosocial distress during the course of their breast cancer diagnosis. Even after appropriate treatments, 18% of women had posttraumatic stress symptomsmany reported lymphedema (27%) and numbness (20%) as persistent problems. This contributed to significant psychosocial distress that can interfere with functioning whichmakes it necessary to assess theQoL within Indonesian femalés breast cancer patients. Objective: The objective of this study was to test the reliability and validity of the Indonesian version of the EORTC QLQ-BR23 to assess the health-related quality of life of women with breast cancer in Indonesia. Methods: The QLQ-BR23 questionnaire were distributed to 25 breast cancer patients in the Oncology Department of Siloam General Hospital Karawaci Tangerang. Data were collected using Microsoft Excel 2016 and was analyzed using SPSS 21.0 with descriptive statistic and pearson correlation statistics. Results: Kolmogorov Smirnov test and Shapiro Wilk test for age showed results > 0.05 which indicates a normal distribution. However item statistics for Blr, SFr, Ser, FPr, STSEr, BSr, ASr and UHLr all showed a relatively low Cronbach's Alpha (<0.70) ranging from 0.378 to 0.56 which implies a low internal reliability. Conclusions: In general the findings of this study indicated that the Indonesian version of QLQ-BR23 validation that we did has not met the hypothesis and expected results. Further study is needed to achieve more reliable results.