Background: Quality of life (QoL) is an important factor in therapeutic decision-making for human patients and is commonly used as an endpoint in clinical trials of cancer treatments.
Aim: to compare owners perception of quality of life (QoL) in canine and feline patients affected by different tumor histotypes treated with single agent or multidrug protocols.
Methods: Owners were asked to assess the impact on QoL of their pets undergoing chemotherapy treatment by answering a questionnaire and assigning a score to different health- related parameters reported to affect QoL.
Results: questionnaires of 101 patients (85 dogs and 16 cats), collected at different time points, were analyzed. Fifty-seven patients received single agent chemotherapy (including carboplatin, doxorubicin, lomustine, melphalan, mitoxantrone, vinblastine, vinorelbine) while 44 were treated with multidrug protocols. No significant differences were found in owners perception of their pet QoL considering different variables, such as chemotherapy protocol type (single agent vs. multidrug protocols) and de-velopment and type of adverse events.
Conclusion: chemotherapy type (single agent vs. multidrug protocol) and related adverse events shown did not influence owners perception of their pet QoL.
Future prospective studies investigating clinical factors possibly related to QoL, such as patients age, stage of the disease, intent of the protocol (curative vs. palliative) are warranted.
Key words: Canine; Chemotherapy; Feline; Quality of life; Tumor
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