Methods: Participants were 112 breast cancer patients who had undergone menopause as a result of chemotherapy. This study was approved by the review boards of the participating institutions and all participants gave written informed consent. Data were collected between January 2016 and February, 2017. Menopausal symptoms were recorded with Menopause Rating Scale (MRS). Quality of life was measured with the Functional Assessment Cancer Therapy-General (FACT-G). Descriptive statistics and multiple regression analysis were used to analyze data.
Results: Most frequently reported symptoms were sleep difficulties (88.4%), impaired memory (80.4%), Joint and muscle problems (76.8%), feeling depressed (70.5%), hot flushes and sweating (68.7) and nervouness and irritability (68.7%) in premenopausal breast cancer patients. The most severe symptoms were joint and muscle problems (54.5%), urinary problems (48.2%), hot flushes and sweating (47.3%), and heart complaints (43.7%). The results showed that there was a significant correlation between the severity of menopausal symptom and QOL. The correlation analyses showed that the psychosomatic, somatic, and urogenital complaints in MRS all had a negative correlation with QOL score. Also the results of the regression analyses showed that menopausal symptoms, especially psychological complaints, was statistically significant in predicting patients' QOL ( F=80.25, p<.001) explaining 68% of the variance.
Conclusion: Menopausal symptom and QOL are essential variables that should be acknowledged when delivering health care to breast cancer patients undergo premature menopause. Therefore, future trials will require
more attention to reporting the incidence of chemotherapy-induced menopause and will consider prevention and treatment strategies for the symptoms and long-term side affects of menopause