Development and Validation of the Korean Version of the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire for Patients with Non-muscle Invasive Bladder Cancer: EORTC QLQ-NMIBC24

Park, Jinsung; Shin, Dong Wook; Kim, Tae-Hwan; Jung, Seung Il; Nam, Jong Kil; Park, Seung Chol; Hong, Sungwoo; Jung, Jae Hung; Kim, Hongwook; Kim, Won Tae

We found a significant improvement between baseline and post-TURBT visits in the urinary symptoms and also found such tendency in the malaise symptoms. This finding may be because BC can cause various urinary symptoms [13] and urinary tract infection-like symptoms at diagnosis [14] but such symptoms generally improve after TURBT. However, urinary symptoms at post-TURBT visits (3 and 6 months) in UK patients of the original manuscript [8] did not differ from baseline, while malaise significantly deteriorated compared to baseline. We think that higher proportions of patients undergoing intravesical treatment, which was frequently associated with various symptoms including urinary symp-toms (urinary frequency, urgency, dysuria, etc.) and malaiselike symptoms, in the original study (100% compared to 37.4% in our study population) might affect their findings, although further studies in another patient cohorts are needed to elucidate exact reasons of these inconsistent findings in urinary symptoms and malaise. Meanwhile, future worries significantly improved after treatment, reflecting improvement of well-known psychological distress after diagnosis of BC [15, 16] , consistent with an original study [8] . NMIBC patients are reported to have sexual dysfunction including sexual inactivity and fear about contaminating partner with treatment agents [17] . Interestingly, risk of contaminating a partner gradually improved over time (between visits 2 and 3), whereas sexual function showed a decreasing tendency after treatment. No difference was observed in other scales except aforementioned scales until 6 months, similar to an original study [8] , in which most scales and items did not significantly change before and after treatment except for three scales (malaise, future worries, and bloating and flatulence).