Evaluation of the health literacy and its association with quality of life in patients with Breast cancer, referring to Ghazi Tabatabi Hospital

Abstract

The aim of this study is to evaluation of the health literacy and its association with quality of life in patients with Breast cancer, referring to Ghazi Tabatabi Hospital. Materials and Methods: This was a descriptive-analytical cross-sectional study and the target population included all women diagnosed with breast cancer referred to Shahid Ghazi Educational and Research Center in Tabriz in 2018, with at least 120 patients over 18 years of age were enrolled. Sampling was performed non-randomly and available by considering entry and exit criteria. The method of collecting data through interview and self-report of patient and record information by referring to the patient's file. Data collection tools were in the form of a questionnaire that included demographic information questionnaire about age, marital status, employment, etc., and adult functional health literacy questionnaire (including 2 sections: computational of 50 questions and reading comprehension of 17 questions) and quality of life questionnaire in cancer (V.3. EORTC QLQ- C30). Results: In this study, the mean age (standard deviation) of the subjects was 48.88 (±9.2) years. The majority of those had poor health literacy scores with 59 cases (53.6%). The mean (SD) of health literacy performance in the subjects was 53.68 (±25.8). Also, the mean (SD) of the standard score of the subscales of quality of life were: physical health 51.82 (±20.9), mental health 55.87 (±18.3), social relationships 63.48 (±21.6), Environmental health 57.63 (±19.6) and overall general health 59/09 (±23.8). Of all the variables related to demographic characteristics, disease, and quality of life, only the variables of physical health (P-value = 0.002) and social relationships (P-value = 0.004) had a statistically significant relationship with health literacy and other variables such as age, level of education, occupation, income level, type of cancer, disease stage, length of diagnosis, pain score, mental health, environmental health and general health were not statistically significant with health literacy (P-value> 0.05).