Patients with newly diagnosed urinary cancer face both the disease itself and an upcoming operation, making the perioperative period a critical window for supportive care.

This study aimed to evaluate the short-term influence of preoperative educational materials on quality of life in these patients before surgery.

Patients with urinary cancer were retrospectively enrolled from April 2020 to March 2021.

Quality of life was assessed using the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire-Core 30 version 3.0 on the day of admission and after patients read the education materials; propensity score matching was applied to match baseline characteristics in subgroup analyses.

A total of 180 patients were enrolled, most of them male with renal cancer.

After the intervention, sleep disturbance (p = 0.004), appetite loss (p = 0.013), fatigue (p = 0.002), constipation (p = 0.029), and physical function (p = 0.006) showed statistically significant differences.

Subgroup analyses suggested that improvements in sleep disturbance, fatigue, and physical function persisted in the younger group (≤ 60 years old), while bladder cancer patients showed improvements in physical function and cognitive function.

The authors conclude that preoperative educational materials were associated with short-term improvements in specific quality-of-life domains, with younger age and bladder cancer diagnosis appearing to be potential effect modifiers.

The work titled “Preoperative educational materials improve the short‐term quality of life of patients with urinary cancer” was published in UroPrecision.

Source: Higher Education Press