Women treated with accelerated partial breast irradiation (APBI) reported a significantly better quality of life (QOL) compared to women treated with whole breast irradiation (WBI), a group of Italian researchers has found. They presented their results on Wednesday, December 7, at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.
APBI has several advantages, including shorter treatment time, improved safety profile, and a cost reduction compared with standard fractionation, all of which are driving researchers to continue evaluating the technique.
In their phase III study, researchers with the Cancer Research and Prevention Institute in Florence, Italy, compared standard adjuvant radiotherapy (50 Gy in 25 fractions, plus 10 Gy boost) to APBI using intensity-modulated radiation therapy technique (30 Gy in five daily fractions). Five-year results previously showed equivalence between the two procedures in terms of local control.
In the current study, 205 patients (105 APBI and 100 WBI) were asked to complete two specific QOL questionnaires (the EORTC QLQ-C30 and the BR23). The BR23 assesses QOL issues relevant to patients with breast cancer, whereas the EORTC QLQ-C30 is a validated measure of QOL of patients with cancer in multicultural clinical research settings.
On the EORTC QLQ-C30, APBI showed significant improvement in terms of global health status (p < 0.0001), main functional status (p < 0.01), and symptom scales (p < 0.01). In the BR23 module, APBI showed significantly better outcome in terms of body image perception (p < 0.0001) and future perspective (p < 0.0001) among functional scales, as well as breast (p < 0.0001) and arm symptoms (p = 0.002) among symptom scales.