Breast cancer (BC) is the most common cancer in women worldwide, affecting approximately one in eight women during her lifetime in Western countries. (chiffres Globocan). Approximately two thirds of BC are hormone receptor-positive and the multimodal treatment will therefore include hormone therapy during 5 years or even longer (Burstein et al. 2019).
Many studies have described a wide range of disruptions in day to day living after breast cancer diagnosis and treatment. These physical, psychological and social concerns for the patients, related to the disease and its treatment, are now recognized as important outcomes in clinical trials and are evaluated in standardized Health-related quality of life (HRQL) questionnaires like the general EORTC QLQ-C30 dedicated to all cancer patients (Aaronson et al. 1993) or the EORTC QLQ-BR23 dedicated to breast cancer patients (Sprangers et al. 1996).
Sexual dysfunction is frequent during and after treatment for breast cancer (Ananth et al. 2003; Krychman et al. 2006; Pup et al. 2019) and is not specifically evaluated in these general HRQL questionnaires. Recently, the EORTC SHQ-C22 has been developed as a standardized instrument to evaluate sexual quality of life (QoL) in cancer patients to address and evaluate in more detail the sexual dysfunction related to the disease and the treatment(Oberguggenberger et al. 2018).
A prospective longitudinal assessment is conduted of the sexual functioning of women during the first year of adjuvant hormonal therapy using global HRQL questionnaires as well as the new SHQ-C22 questionnaire specifically dedicated to sexual QoL for cancer patients.
