Editorial

摘要

Great hopes are held for healthcare service quality assurers to reduce costs by improving service efficiency and effectiveness. Abandoning non-effective treatments, for example, seems a blindingly obvious action, but one that seems to be ignored. One jaw-dropping outcome that emerges each year from the NHS patient reported outcome study survey, is the reduced post-treatment quality of life (QoL) reported by patients undergoing certain surgical interventions. Is this outcome true for life-saving surgery too? That is, despite life-saving cancer surgery and adjuvant chemotherapy/radiotherapy, is post-treatment improved QoL guaranteed or is it a moot point; i.e., merely surviving a life-threatening encounter is sufficient? Nahla Fawzy Abou Elezz et al., in this issue, highlight the QoL drivers and restrainers among post-treatment breast cancer sufferers. Most readers would not be surprised about radical mastectomy's influence on women's QoL. The cosmetic effects alone daunt many women. Readers, on the other hand, may be taken aback by driver and restrainer complexity, and their inter-relationships, especially the two-way interaction between breast surgery women and their family members. The study does as an excellent job spotlighting QoL issues among breast cancer sufferers, but, unfortunately, problems are intransigent and are hard to resolve without significant spending. Nevertheless, despite the competition for healthcare money; clearly, here is one group that deserve the utmost effort to help sufferers through a difficult life phase.