Patient-reported quality of life with interstitial partial breast brachytherapy and external beam whole breast radiotherapy: a comparison using propensity-score matching

Introduction
The aim of this study was to compare patient-reported quality of life (QOL) scores after accelerated partial breast irradiation (APBI) using interstitial brachytherapy vs. external beam whole breast radiotherapy (WBRT) for breast cancer.

Material and methods
Women with breast cancer treated with WBRT or APBI after breast conservation surgery were enrolled in this prospective study. Single cross-sectional QOL assessment was performed using EORTC QLQ-C30 and BR-23 questionnaires. Patients treated with APBI were propensity-score matched to similar cohort of patients treated with WBRT. QOL scores were analyzed for the entire unmatched cohort and compared between the two matched cohorts using Student’s two-tailed t-test. P-value of < 0.05 was considered statistically significant, and a 10-point difference between mean scores was considered clinically meaningful.

Results
A  total of 64 APBI patients were matched with 99 WBRT patients out of the entire study cohort of 320 cases. QOL scores for functional scales of QLQ-C30 were similar between the two groups for both matched and unmatched cohorts, while symptom scores of QLQ-C30 did not show any clinically significant difference. Functional scales of BR-23 did not show any clinical or statistically significant difference. Among symptom scales of BR-23, scores were similar for APBI and WBRT groups except for a worse score of “upset by hair loss” sub-scale in the brachytherapy group of the matched cohort (51.9 vs. 22.7, p = 0.006).

Conclusions
Patients undergoing APBI reported similar QOL compared to WBRT when matched for various factors.