Prostate and breast cancer share many similarities: high lifetime prevalence, increasing frequency, role of environmental factors, long survival also in metastatic disease and possibility of screening. The aim of this work is to evaluate the characteristics related to the patients, disease and treatment which can affect HRQoL at the beginning and after radiotherapy.

since June 2009, we have recruited patients, providing informed consent, before radiotherapy (T0). We assess demographic characteristic (age, qualification, work, marital status…); neoplastic staging and grading; radiation dose and other antineoplastic treatment (hormonal/chemio-therapy or surgery); concomitant medical disease and pharmacological therapy. We evaluate HRQoL by EORTC-QLQ-C30 and EORTC-QLQ-PR25 (prostate-specific) or EORTC-QLQ-BR23 (breast-specific). The protocol also includes HADS, Paykel Life Events Scale and EPQ-R. The work is ongoing and implies a follow-up at 6 and 12 months (T1/T2).

The majority of men have a localized disease with Gleason score between 6 and 8 and the median pretreatment PSA is 10.52 ng/mL; 70% will undergo adjuvant-RT; median age is 69.30 years. Women have a median age of 58.46 years, all underwent surgery and all have a localized disease and positive receptorial status. Global QoL is lightly higher in the man sample; both groups report a major deficit at Emotional Function and high levels of Fatigue. The personological characteristic more represented is “Extravertion”.

The results show an association between worse QoL, “Nevroticism” and high Anxiety levels only in the men sample at T0. At the moment, there is no significant relation in the women sample.