Palliative Oncological Patients with Insomnia: Concerns of the Patients and Their Relatives’ Perception

Abstract

Insomnia is one of the most frequent symptoms and usually generates significant stress in 60% of patients with advanced cancer. Worries from the patients’ and relatives’ perspective are crucial to improve the patients’ quality of life but have received limited attention. The aims were to identify the concerns of patients with insomnia in the terminal illness stage in a palliative care unit and the relatives’ perception, and to compare both. Here, 63 patients and 53 relatives answered a questionnaire about worries in the personal, spiritual, family-related and economic area, as well as a quality-of-life uniscale. The results showed that the relatives’ most frequent concern was “Having lived life to the fullest” (100%), and the most intense was “The possible suffering during the process” (9.2/10). The patients’ most expressed concern was: “Having unfinished business” (100%), and the most intense was “Suffering during the process” (9.3/10). Quality of life showed an average value of 6.95 out of 10. Relatives only coincided significantly in: “Not knowing what happens after death” (r = 0.600; p = 0.000). These results bring visibility to concerns during the final stage of oncological palliative patients with insomnia from the patients’ and relatives’ perspective. Knowing both is useful for professionals to foster the well-being for a short, yet very important, period for patients, relatives and the caregiving team.

Patient-reported outcomes versus proxy-reported outcomes in supportive and palliative care: a summary of recent literature

“…Three of the five articles we found focused on patients with advanced cancer. Guiteras et al 18 focused on the concerns, worries, needs, and QoL of palliative cancer patients suffering from insomnia using relatives as proxies. It showed that relatives only partly perceived the patient’s concerns and underestimated the presence and intensity of several of these concerns, despite their correlation with the loss of QoL (Table 1).…”

The Effect of the Bright White Light Application to Cancer Patients Receiving Palliative Care on Their Fatigue Level and Sleep Quality: A Randomized Control Trial

“…Cancer patients experience sleep disturbances due to multiple factors such as preexisting conditions, pain, side effects of cancer treatment, fatigue, stress, anxiety, and depression. Previous studies indicated that the prevalence of sleep disorders was 5-35% in the general population and 25-95% in cancer patients (Guiteras et al, 2021;Hugel et al, 2004;Lavdaniti, 2019).…”