Supportive care needs and health-related quality of life among Chinese lung cancer survivors

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore the supportive care needs and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) of lung cancer survivors, and to identify the association between patient characteristics, HRQoL and supportive care needs. Method: This was a sub-study of a larger scale survey of cancer survivors' supportive care needs. A total of 48 lung cancer survivors were recruited from a regional teaching hospital, and a three-part structured questionnaire was used to collect 1) socio-demographic and clinical characteristics, 2) supportive care needs and 3) health-related quality of life data. Results: The three most commonly reported unmet needs were all in the health-system information domain: 1) being informed about your results as soon as possible (58%), 2) being informed about cancer which is under control or diminishing (50%), and 3) being informed about things you can do to help yourself get well (46%). The second most common unmet need domain was access to healthcare and ancillary support services. The survivors generally reported satisfactory HRQoL. However, household income and unmet physical and psychological needs were independently associated with HRQoL among these survivors. Conclusion: The high unmet needs in the health-system information area call for a review of the content and amount of information provided to lung cancer survivors. In addition, more attention should be given to lung cancer survivors with low incomes but high physical and psychological unmet needs, who require appropriate follow-up and long-term care of a physical, social and psychological kind.

Unmet supportive care needs associated with quality of life for people with lung cancer: A systematic review of the evidence 2007–2020

“…After removal of duplicates, we screened titles and abstracts of 3236 and identified 61 as potentially relevant. Following assessment of the full text of these potentially relevant articles, we identified four studies involving patients with lung cancer that met our inclusion criteria (Chan et al, 2012;Giuliani et al, 2016;Pardon et al, 2011;Sanders et al, 2010). A further six studies were identified with mixed cancer populations; the lung cancer cohort from one of these was reported in an included study (Chan et al, 2012).…”

“…There was some variation across the studies in the tools used to assess QoL and unmet needs (Table 1). Four studies of the six studies assessed patients' QoL using cancer specific tools (Chan et al, 2012;Giuliani et al, 2016;Sanders et al, 2010;Zhu et al, 2018). Molassiotis et al, used a single item, taken from the Cancer Survivors Survey of Need (Filsinger et al, 2011); in all cases a higher score represented a higher QoL.…”

“…In relation to measuring unmet needs, four studies (Chan et al, 2012;Giuliani, 2016;Sanders et al, 2010;Zhu et al, 2018) used the SCNS (Boyes et al, 2009). Three of the studie used the 34-item version which assesses the perceived need for help amonsgt people with cancer across five domains: (1) psychological, (2) health system and information, (3) physical and daily living, (4) patient care and support and ( 5) sexuality.…”

Most prevalent unmet supportive care needs and quality of life of breast cancer patients in a tertiary hospital in Malaysia

“…In western countries unmet needs were highest in psychological domain which is consistent with the findings of this study [ 36 , 42 , 43 ]. Whereas in Asian developing countries unmet needs were mostly related to health system information [ 17 , 44 – 47 ]. As a matter of fact, supportive care needs are the product of perspective of culture and interaction of psychology based on cultural context [ 30 ].…”

“…Although it is acknowledged as an essential service, 1–93 % of cancer patients’ supportive needs have been consistently unmet [ 15 , 16 ]. There is growing evidence that the needs perceived by breast cancer patients and the support being provided by the healthcare professionals are diverse [ 8 , 17 , 18 ]. Hence, it is found that the breast cancer patients mostly suffer from physical, emotional, social, financial and psychological disturbances to a greater extent and unmet needs were highest in the post-treatment phase compared to the other phases of cancer continuum [ 10 , 15 , 19 , 20 ].…”