Quality of Life in Surgical Oncology Patients
A Special Issue of Current Oncology (ISSN 1718-7729) belonging to the section "Surgical Oncology".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 October 2026 | Viewed by 2750
Editor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The treatment of patients with cancer is complex and multidisciplinary. We have always assumed that the role of all treatments is to cure the disease and return the patient to a normal lifestyle. In modern medical practice, this involves assessing not only survival and cures but balancing the impacts of these treatments, which often may be palliative or non-curative, on the overall quality of life of the patient and the wider ramifications on their family and carers.
As the burden of cancer often falls on the older population, and as this population increases with life expectancy rates increasing worldwide, this Special Issue becomes even more important as we assess the impacts of aggressive treatments on a frailer population where issues, such as personal mobility, desires for independent living, and morbidity, associated with treatments need to be considered and assessed. To paraphrase Ivor Lewis when discussing some early treatments of oesophageal cancer: "We may or may not have prolonged their life: we certainly prolonged their misery”
As our abilities to treat and palliate tumours expand, we also need to expand beyond simple measures of just survival but take a more nuanced view and include in studies the overall impact of treatments on patients and their families, the ramifications on health resources and the health and community economic repercussions of treatments.
This Special Issue aims to present and discuss the issues of quality of life and surgical oncology. Contributions to be considered should cover this in the broader context of impacts not just on the patient but on the community and society.
Topics of interest will include, but not be limited to, the following:
- Quality of life during and following treatment;
- Impacts of treatments on the older population;
- Impacts of technological improvements on treatments and quality of life;
- Balancing cure and palliation with quality of life in different aged populations;
- Moral dilemma associated with refusing and refusal of treatments in the older age groups;
- Impacts of aggressive treatments on the health system in a financially constrained environment and the real opportunity costs to other patient cohorts;
- Health equity and quality of life in the provision of treatments.
Dr. Neil Merrett
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Current Oncology is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- PROMS
- quality of life
- health economics
- surgical oncology
- precision medicine
- robotic surgery
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