Quality of life, healthcare usage and finances of UK cancer survivors five years post-diagnosis: a matched controlled study

Purpose Assessing the long-term impact of cancer on people’s lives is challenging due to confounding issues such as aging and comorbidities. We aimed to investigate this impact by comparing the outcomes of cancer survivors with a matched control cohort.

Methods This was a cross-sectional survey of breast, colorectal and ovarian cancer survivors approximately 5 years post-diagnosis and a cohort of age, sex and social deprivation-matched controls who had never had a cancer diagnosis. Eligible participants were invited by post to complete a survey assessing quality of life (QoL), health, identity, healthcare usage and finances.

Results A total of 2075 out of 5734 (36.2%) eligible participants participated (852 cancer survivors and 1223 matched controls). Cancer survivors had poorer QoL than matched controls as assessed by the Quality of Life of Adult Cancer Survivors (QLACS) summary score (p = 0.007); however, the effect size was modest (ω2 = 0.121). The cancer survivors also reported worse outcomes across some individual domains of QoL and health, but not others, and differences were small. There were few differences between cohorts across healthcare usage and finances.

Conclusions Five years or more after diagnosis, the QoL, healthcare usage and finances of breast, colorectal and ovarian cancer survivors were generally similar to that of age, sex and IMD-matched controls.

Implications for Cancer Survivors This finding has important implications for people affected by cancer and those providing care who would benefit from greater information on outcomes and functioning beyond treatment. Despite this reassuring finding, it is important to note that there were some differences, on both physical and psychosocial issues, mandating the need for specialist service provision.