What is it about?

Breast cancer is one of the most common types of cancer in women. Having breast cancer or even cancer treatment affects their quality of life. However, we still did not know much as to which factors will affect their QOL. This paper found that their body image was the one single factor that affects their QoL.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

Since we know that body image will affect QoL, we can give some early intervention and education programme to improve their body image so that women with breast cancer can reshape themselves again. We also found that social construction had a major impact on their body image; how their breasts symbolised womanhood and motherhood would differ culturally.

Perspectives

It was a good decision to have our female colleague with us to help with the interview since we were discussing a very sensitive topic as in women's body image after they had breast cancer. The interview dynamic changed drastically between male and female interviewee. This paper was also a good start of another project that focused on women's body image and how would they reconstruct themselves after having breast cancer.

Dr Tharin Phenwan
University of Dundee

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: Abstracts of the MASCC/ISOO 2016 Annual Meeting, Supportive Care in Cancer, April 2016, Springer Science + Business Media,
DOI: 10.1007/s00520-016-3209-z.
You can read the full text:

Read

Resources

Contributors

The following have contributed to this page