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Early detection of cervical cancer helps improve quality of life: NCKU study
NCKU Press Center
[Tainan, Taiwan, January 13, 2014]
 “Early detection of cervical cancer not only saves lives, but also avoids living with poor quality of life,” revealed Dr. Jung-Der Wang, professor of public health from College of Medicine at National Cheng Kung University (NCKU), southern Taiwan.
The research team led by Dr. Wang has abstracted data of 22,543 new cases of invasive cervical cancer (ICC) from the Taiwan National Cancer Registry to estimate the lifetime survival function.
Also, a consecutive, cross-sectional sample of 421 patients with ICC or carcinoma in situ (CIS) has been included to measure the quality of life (QOL).
The ratio of QOL score functions for ICC and CIS patients were summed up over lifetime to obtain the duration of suffering from dissatisfied health-related quality of life (HRQL).
Their study titled “Estimation of Potential Gain in Quality of Life from Early Detection of Cervical Cancer” published in Value in Health in 2014.
Prof. Wang noted, “In comparison with invasive cervical cancer, early detection of cervical neoplasm at pre-cancer stage not only avoids 6.48 years of life loss, but also prevents reduction in HRQL in the long-run”
“When we detect a CIS case, it takes only about 10 minutes to remove the lesion and the patient recovers completely without any further discomfort,” according to Dr. Ya-Min Cheng, the leading gynecologist who invited these patients to join the study.
She also said, “If it is diagnosed at the CIS invasive cancer stage, the patient usually must go through surgery or chemotherapy and radiotherapy. The patients’ quality of life is impaired, including that of sexual life.”
“We are very pleased to inform all our people that early detection of cervical cancer not only saves lives, but also avoids living with poor quality of life, and we have quantified the numbers of years with poor quality of life,” according to Cheng.
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