•  
  •  
 

Rehabilitation Practice and Science

Translated Title

頭頸癌患者放射治療後胸鎖乳突肌硬化與生活品質之關係

Abstract

Objective: Radiation-induced fibrosis after radiation treatment frequently results in neck and shoulder pain/dysfunction, trismus, dysphagia, muscle stiffness and lower health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in patients with head and neck (H&N) cancer. Here, we access the correlation between neck muscle stiffness after radiation therapy and HRQOL, and the effect of rehabilitation on muscle stiffness and HRQOL. Method: We used real-time sonoelastography to evaluate sternocleidomastoid muscle (SCM) stiffness after radiation therapy. We used the EORTC QLQ-30 and EORTCQLQ H&N35 to evaluate the HRQOL of H&N cancer patients. Each participant received real-time sonoelastography and an HRQOL evaluation twice with the course of 6 months to compare changes in soft-tissue stiffness and HRQOL. The participants were subdivided into two groups with and without rehabilitation treatment to compare the effect of rehabilitation on changes in SCM stiffness and HRQOL. Results: Twenty-five patients with H&N cancers were included in the study. Seventeen of the patients completed both evaluations 6 months later. The SCM stiffness area of the radiation site was significantly larger than the non-radiation site at the initial evaluation (54.3 ± 23.0 % vs. 40.5 ± 19.7 %, p=0.036), but the SCM stiffness area of both sites showed no significant difference 6 months after the initial evaluation. Some of the HRQOL subscales (physical functioning, emotion functioning, nausea/ vomiting, dyspnea, insomnia and senses problems) improved when the SCM stiffness area decreased at follow up. The SCM stiffness area and HRQOL changes were not significantly different for patients with or without the rehabilitation treatment, which may be due to the small number of participants in our study. Conclusions: The HRQOL of H&N cancer patients revealed a negative correlation with the SCM stiffness area change. Rehabilitation treatment showed no significant effect on the SCM stiffness area change and HRQOL, which may be due to the small number of participants and variations in compliance with rehabilitation treatment in our cohort.

Language

English

First Page

203

Last Page

216

Download

Share

COinS