Health-related quality of life by type of breast surgery in women with primary breast cancer: prospective longitudinal cohort study

Abstract Background Health-related quality of life and patient-related outcome measures for patients with cancer have gained increased interest over the last decade. However, few prospective studies with longitudinal data evaluated health-related quality of life in patients with breast cancer. This study aimed to investigate how health-related quality of life changed from the time of diagnosis to 1 year after breast cancer surgery for the main surgical techniques. Methods This prospective longitudinal single-centre study included patients with primary breast cancer diagnosed in 2019–2020 who underwent surgery. Patients completed a health-related quality of life questionnaire (Breast-Q) at baseline. One year after surgery, they completed the Breast-Q a second time, the EORTC (European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer) quality of life questionnaire-C30 and the quality of life questionnaire-BR23. Analysis of variance and Kruskal–Wallis tests were used to evaluate the differences in health-related quality of life between surgical groups. Analysis of covariance with robust standard errors was used to adjust for confounders. Results In total, 340 patients were included in the study; 160 patients received oncoplastic partial mastectomy, 112 received partial mastectomy, 42 received mastectomy and 26 had mastectomy with immediate reconstruction. Patients that had partial mastectomy or oncoplastic partial mastectomy were more satisfied with their breasts (P 0.001), had a better body image (P = 0.006) and higher sexual functioning scores (P = 0.027) than patients who had a mastectomy with/without reconstruction. The oncoplastic and mastectomy with reconstruction groups had more breast symptoms than other groups (P 0.001), and the mastectomy group had the least symptoms from the chest area. Conclusion Partial mastectomy and oncoplastic partial mastectomy have the best outcomes in terms of breast satisfaction, body image and sexual functioning. This highlights the importance of preserving the breast when feasible and underscores that breast reconstruction is not equal to breast conservation. Registration number: NCT04227613 (http://www.clinicaltrials.gov).