Abstract
Context: Lung cancer is common cancer worldwide. Because of the high-symptoms burden and severe morbidity, effective symptoms management requires comprehensive self-care strategies.
Aim: This study was aimed to assess the effect of self-care guidelines on symptoms burden for patients with lung cancer undergoing chemotherapy.
Methods: This study was conducted at the outpatient clinics in Radiation Oncology and Nuclear Medicine Center, affiliated to Ain Shams University. A quasi-experimental (pre/posttest) design was employed on a purposive sample of 50 adult patients were recruited for this study. The data were collected through a structured interview questionnaire to assess the patients’ socio-demographic characteristics, medical health profile, and knowledge about lung cancer. Lung Cancer and Chemotherapy Associated Symptoms Self-care Practices’ Assessment Questionnaire and M. D. Anderson Symptom Inventory-Lung Cancer (MDASI-LC) were also used.
Results: The present study revealed that 36% of the patients had a satisfactory level of knowledge pre-implementation of self-care guidelines, which improved significantly for 48% of the patients post-implementation at p 0.007. 26.3% of them exhibit a satisfactory level of self-care practice pre-implementation of self-care guidelines that improved significantly (57.9%) post-implementation at p 0.001. Also, lung cancer symptom burdens and symptoms' influence on patients' lives were significantly improved after the implementation compared with preintervention level at p 0.001. A non-significant difference between pre and post-implementation of self-care guidelines regarding symptoms interference with patients' life was revealed at p 0.801. There were statistically negative correlations between patients' total symptom severity and self-care practice pre- and post-self-care guidelines implementation.
Conclusion: self-care guidelines have a statistically significant positive effect on decreasing the severity of lung cancer symptoms. While chemotherapy-associated symptoms were slightly improved, there were no significant differences between pre and post-self-care guidelines implementation regarding symptoms interference with patients’ life. Health education programs about the disease and its management should be provided for lung cancer patients.
Open access articles are distributed under the terms of Creative Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium provided the original work is properly cited.