Junjie N Caber
Objective: This descriptive co-relational study aimed to determine the quality of life of patients with well differentiated thyroid carcinoma undergoing radioactive iodine I-131 therapy and their suicidal ideation at Perpetual Succour Hospital for the year 2018.
Method: The subjects of the study with well differentiated thyroid carcinoma comprising the entire group and classified as to: age, sex, civil status, educational attainment, work status, stage of cancer and co-morbid conditions. The data gathered were subjected to descriptive and inferential statistics set at 5% level of significance.
Result: The level of cancer and the socio-demographic profiles of the respondents indicated that at least one of the predictors in the model has a statistically significant association with a higher level of cancer. In particular, only age is statistically significant at the significance level of 0.05. Since the coefficient is positive, it indicates that a higher level cancer becomes more likely as the age increases. The odds ratio also indicates that for every one year, the patient grows the likelihood of a higher level cancer that is increased by 1.12 times. The overall level of the quality of life of the respondents in terms of psychological, physical, emotional, social and financial is good. While the respondent’s level of suicidal ideation in terms of psychological and emotional is low. Moreover, marital status is observed to be statistically significant. Finally, co-relational analysis of quality of life and the suicidal ideation of the respondents show that the correlation coefficient is statistically significant at the significance level of 0.05. The coefficient suggests a moderate negative relationship.
Conclusion: This study proved that once the patient is diagnosed with cancer, changes in the age are associated with changes in the probability of the severity of the cancer by 1.12 times. The quality of life differs among statuses. The respondents who are married have better quality of life compared with the others, while separated ones have poorer life quality. Lastly, the study proved that the better the quality of life, the less likely for the patients to commit suicide.
Note: This work is partly presented at EuroSciCon Conference on Oncology and Cancer Stem Cell, November 05-06, 2018 held at Paris, France
