The applications of a combined-variables method in analyzing the influencing factors of the quality of life in patients with gastric carcinoma

doi:10.3321/j.issn:1673-8225.2004.05.004

Abstract：BACKGROUND: The concept of the quality of life has been widely accepted by clinic doctors. Several researches have studied the influencing factors of the quality of life of the stomach cancer patients; however, the weights of the factors on the quality of life of the gastric cancer patients have not been studied because of lacking a suitable statistical analyzing method. OBJECTIVE: To propose a method of constructing combined variables to analyze the weight relationships of the factors that influence the quality of life of the gastric carcinoma patients. DESIGN: To investigate all of the stomach cancer patients who were diagnosed by the provincial-level hospitals during 1998- 1999 in Fuzhou city with the method of retrospective studies. SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS: The records of 560 stomach cancer patients were provided by the Tumor Registration Office of Fujian Province, Of them, 144 patients had died before the time of investigation and 20 patients had moved with the result that the investigators were not able to locate them. Therefore, there were 396 patients in our sample with an age range of 32 - 75 years old. INTERVENTION: All of the patients in our sample were asked to fill the questionnaire reflecting the information of the disease condition, treatment and rehabilitation along with 18 items that describe the quality of life of them.MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: The scores of 18 items and the values of the variables in the questionnaire were obtained from the answered questiounaires. RESULTS: Three groups of combined variables composed of the factors that influence the quality of life were obtained and their weights of effect on the quality of life of the stomach cancer patients were 0. 35, 0. 32 and 0. 33 respectively.CONCLUSION: Using nonlinear principal component analysis and linear regression to work out the combined variables is suitable to analyze the factors that influence the quality of life of the gastric cancer patients. The basic social and economic conditions and rehabilitating status of the stomach cancer patients may play a more important role in determining their quality of life.