gms | German Medical Science

Introduction: Quality of life (QoL) has become the center of interest for psychosocial questions within the psychooncological treatment of families with children and adults suffering from cancer. We focused in this study on the analysis of quality of life of these various patient groups with their specific stress-profiles and their alteration after treatment.

Instruments: 148 children plus 225 adults filled in the following QoL-questionaires in the setting of their psychooncological routine for study purposes: SF-36 Health survey (QoL), KINDL (QoL of children). The psychooncological treatment lasting at an average of 1,5 years was performed within the context of the standardized ambulant family orientated rehabilitation program. Results: The Qol-instruments identify family members with high and low psychosocial distress. 87% of the adults and 68% of the children get multiple psychosocial diagnoses and belong to the group of "multi-problem-families". Patients as well as their relatives reported very high distress for t1 (begin of treatment) particulary in the field of psychic and social dimensions comparing with the controll-group. The improvement of QoL is statistical significant and of clinical relevance. High effect-sizes were measured in psychic and social dimensions for t2 (end of treatment). Also the bereaved families benefit from these effects. Conclusions: The ambulant psychooncological treatment of highly stressed young family members is of growing importance. The measuring of QoL is an significant and economic instrument for the estimation of demand, requirement and evaluation of the ambulant psychooncological rehabilitation for children and adults. Further research for the identification of reliable predictors of high stress is however necessary in order to apply the decreasing ressources in a more purposeful way.