Capecitabine non-adherence: Exploration of magnitude, nature and contributing factors

Abstract

Adherence to capecitabine is high with a strong conviction that the therapy is necessary. However, concerns were expressed regarding the experience of side effects. Patients have unmet information needs regarding the processes involved with monitoring capecitabine efficacy and determination of therapy duration. Healthcare professionals may therefore wish to consider a greater focus on involving patients in the monitoring of their care with respect to efficacy and planned treatment schedules.

Adherence to Capecitabine Treatment and Contributing Factors among Cancer Patients in Malaysia

“…Sufficient support will allow these patients to cope with their disease and adhere to the treatment plan well so that the treatment outcome can be achieved. Satisfaction with healthcare providers has shown a significantly positive correlation with adherence in this study and this finding is in line with previous studies done among both cancer and non-cancer patients (Hassan et al, 2006;Bhattacharya et al, 2012). Although there was a significant correlation, the increment of adherence score with every increase of 10% satisfaction score was rather small which was only 0.8%.…”

“…The occurrence of side effects mainly diarrhea, nausea and vomiting, stomatitis and handfoot syndrome was common among patients on oral capecitabine treatment, and very likely to affect the patients' quality of life. Bhattacharya et al (2012) in her study reported that a majority of 80% of the patients actually experienced side effects and the most troubling side effects were hand-foot syndrome and fatigue. In this study, presence of nausea and vomiting and other side effects had significantly affected adherence to oral capecitabine.…”

“…Nonetheless, Bhattacharya and colleagues found that the number of side effects did not influence patients' adherence to their medication (Bhattacharya et al, 2012).…”

“…Previous researchers have been using ranges from 80% to 95% depends on type of diseases and drugs that being studied (Ruddy et al, 2009). Two other similar studies set even higher cut-off point for adherence to capecitabine which is not less than 100% (Winterhalder et al, 2011;Bhattacharya et al, 2012), since they considered that significant deviation from the actual standard may result in significant effect on efficacy. Meanwhile, two other studies set 80% and above as being adherent (Partridge et al, 2010;Thivat et al, 2013).…”

Gemcitabine and capecitabine for advanced biliary cancer

“…Herein highlights the potential clinical benefit of gem-cap as compared to gem-cis, as the former may be better tolerated than gem-cis in terms of side-effect profile (70% in the ABC-02 trial). Capecitabine also has the advantage of oral dosing, which may facilitate drug delivery and patient compliance with therapy (21,22). Although quality of life (QOL) measurement was not performed in this study, the favorable side-effect profile had been reflected in improved or maintained QOL as reported previously (12).…”