| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 護理學研究所 === 95 === Brain tumor is one of the 10 most common tumors in Taiwan, its incidence rate has been increasing with years. The purpose of this study was trying to survey the health-related quality of life in malignant brain tumor patients, and the related factors. This research used descriptive cross-sectional survey method. With purposive sampling, we include 53 malignant brain tumor patients (ICD-9-CM: 191.9), who are conscious and communicable. All of them were neurosurgical inpatients and outpatients in a Taipei medical center. The instruments included “Personal Data Questionnaire”, “EORTC QLQ-C30”, “EORTC QLQ-BN20” and “Social support scale”. Data was collected from Mar 1st to Jun 30th of 2006, and analyzed with SPSS13.0.
As for the results, the average score of overall QoL in malignant brain tumor patients was 54.08±20.06. The data collected from the Core Questionnaire of Living Quality (EORTC QLQ-C30) indicated that the patients had the highest score in Emotional Function and the lowest score in Social Function in relation to Function Group. In Symptom Group, pain gets the highest score while diarrhea the lowest. The Questionnaire of Living Quality Related with Special Disease (EORTC QLQ-BN20) indicated that patients were troubled most by uncertainty of the future, followed by drowsy. Skin itching caused the least trouble.
Social support scale showed that 58.5% of the subjects gain low-level social support. The majority of the subject received general social support (49.36±19.09) from their spouses and family members. The highest score of single item of each questionnaire went to As for single item score, Comment support scores highest (3.36), followed by Emotional Support (2.54), while informational support (2.14) scores lowest.
This study indicates that “Age”, “ Disease Outbreak Age”, “Family Income”, “Marital Status”, “Functional Status”, “Symptom Distress” and “Social Support” were important influential factors to General Quality of Life, which meant married and younger subjects with family income over 50,000 and who got higher scores in functional status but low scores in symptom status would enjoy a better quality of life. The research also demonstrates that social support had positively correlated with functional status and negatively correlated with symptom distress.
The results of this research not only provided information for clinical nurses of malignant brain tumor patients to make them understand better the problems patients have to face during treatment, but also could be taken as the important nursing indicators of malignant brain tumor patients. The utilization of the study can greatly improve the nursing quality and satisfaction in patients with malignant brain tumor.
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