Statistical Analysis

Descriptive statistics were used to describe patient data: frequencies, percent, mean, median (MD) and standard deviation (SD). Fisher’s exact test and t test were used to examine differences between the non-responding participants compared with the responding participants at Baseline, Follow-up 1 and Follow-up 2. Mean values for the study group was illustrated by using 95 % confidence intervals (CI) for the SAQ-S total, Global Health status/QoL and for BIS. For the comparison with SAQ-S total the scores for Global Health status/QoL was converted from 0–100 to 0–5. Wilcoxon signed-rank test was used to examine differences between related groups, at ‘Baseline–Follow-up 1’ and at ‘Follow-up 1–Follow-up 2’.

The area under study is unexplored, therefore linear regression analyses [27] were carried out to further explore how changes in differences for sexuality and body image explained changes in differences for quality of life between the occasions for measurement. The summarized individual mean values of the ‘changes in differences’ between the occasions for measurement were calculated for each scale (diff 1 = difference between Baseline and Follow up 1: and diff 2 = difference between Follow up 1 and Follow up 2). Diff 1 and diff 2 was used as variables in the analysis. Dependent variable was the outcome measures Global Health status/QoL Scale diff. The independent variables Sexual Interest diff, Sexual Function diff, Sexual Satisfaction diff, Body Image Scale diff and Sex were entered simultaneously. Three participants were excluded list-wise in the SAQ-S in the regression analyses. All statistical tests were two-tailed, and P ≤ .05 was considered statistically significant [27]. All statistical analyses were performed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20.0.