The aim of the study presented in this paper is to assess the severity of cancer pain in people with cancer, to assess the relationship between cancer pain and health-related quality of life in people with cancer in terms of physical, emotional and social functioning, and to assess the relationship between pain and bothersome somatic symptoms. The study included 61 adult subjects who were patients of the Pain Management Clinic at the Oncology Centre in Warsaw. Twenty-five women and 36 men with a diagnosis of cancer participated in the study. The level of health-related quality of life was measured with the Quality of Life Questionnaire (QLQ-C30). The level of pain was measured with the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS), while the sensory and emotional nature was examined with a shortened version of the Melzack Questionnaire - Pain Scale (AOP). The averaged results in the study group of patients indicate high pain intensity, medium level of objective quality of life conditioned by the intensity of somatic symptoms and low level of subjective quality of life. There was a negative correlation between pain and subjective and objective quality of life in the study subjects. The results of comparisons between groups of patients with higher and lower quality of life on functional dimensions in relation to pain and somatic symptom annoyance indicate that: 1) the lower the severity of cancer pain, the better the patients' physical and emotional functioning; 2) the lower the annoyance of cancer-related somatic symptoms, the better the patients' physical, emotional, life roles and social relations functioning. The findings suggest that it is reasonable to extend cancer pain care to include psychological and social care in order to improve the quality of life of patients with cancer and indirectly to reduce the perceived severity of cancer pain.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Katarzyna- Lomper/publication/316362962_Association_between_acceptance_of_illness_anxiety_and_d epression_with_assessment_quality_of_life_of_breast_cancer_patients/links/5925924f0f7e9b 9979847efc/Association-between-acceptance-of-illness-anxiety-and-depression-with- assessment-quality-of-life-of-breast-cancer-patients.pdf