Thirty-two women with gynecologic cancer who had been treated with a radical hysterectomy, a vulvectomy, or total pelvic exenteration and were currently disease-free were studied. The patients' average score on the Functional Living Index-Cancer was 124; that is, most reported a good quality of life. Their scores on the SCL-90-R reflected moderately elevated levels of psychological distress that were comparable to levels of breast cancer patients who had participated in an earlier study. The authors found a strong negative correlation (r = -.64) between age and sychological distress; younger patients appeared to be more at risk for psychological problemm after radical gynecologic surgery.
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Roberts et al. (1992) studied this question.