Health-Related Quality Of Life Of Women With Breast Cancer And Those Without Cancer At Unth Ituku/Ozalla Enugu.

Breast cancer is a serious, stressful and life-threatening disease. Breast cancer survivors increasingly experience long-term side effects that influence their quality of life (Wonghongkul, Dechaprom , Phumivichuvate & Losawatkul,2006).This descriptive study was conducted on the health related quality of life of women with breast cancer and those without cancer at the university of Nigeria Teaching Hospital Ituku/Ozalla Enugu. Five objectives and four hypothesis were generated to guide the study. The study was carried out at the oncology and surgical unit of the University of Nigerian Teaching Hospital Ituku /Ozalla Enugu. A sample size of 230 women made up of 115 women with breast cancer and 115 women without breast cancer was selected using the purposive sampling technique. The WHO Quality of life BREF (WHOQOL-BREF) questionnaire was used as the instrument for data collection in addition to six demographic data questions added by the researcher. The questionnaire was administered with the help of four trained research assistants. Data generated was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Finding revealed that the HRQoL scores of women with breast cancer were lower than that of the women without cancer in the three domains of life. The women with breast cancer had the highest mean score (22) in the physical domain, followed by the psychological domain score (20) and the lowest mean score (10) in the social domain just like the women without cancer who had the highest mean score (27) in the physical domain, followed by the psychological domain score (23) and the lowest mean score(11) in the social domain but the overall quality of life scores of the women with out breast cancer was higher with a mean and standard deviation score of 4.23±0.7 than that of those with breast cancer group with a mean and standard deviation score of 3.50±1.01. In the comparison between HRQoL scores of women with breast cancer and those without breast cancer in the different domains, there was a significant difference in this comparison in the physical and psychological domains(t=-7.285,df 228, p