Understanding Long-Term Cancer Survivors’ Preferences for Ongoing Medical Care.

A new interesting article has been published in J Gen Intern Med. 2019 Jul 31. doi: 10.1007/s11606-019-05189-y. and titled:

Understanding Long-Term Cancer Survivors’ Preferences for Ongoing Medical Care.

Authors of this article are:

Smith TG, Strollo S, Hu X, Earle CC, Leach CR, Nekhlyudov L.

A summary of the article is shown below:

BACKGROUND: Due to risk for treatment-related late effects and concerns about cancer recurrence, long-term cancer survivors have unique medical needs. Survivors’ preferences for care may influence adherence and care utilization.OBJECTIVE: To describe survivors’ preferences for care and factors associated with preferred and actual care.DESIGN: Cross-sectional analysis of participants in a longitudinal study using mailed questionnaires.PARTICIPANTS: Survivors of ten common cancers (n = 2,107, mean years from diagnosis 8.9).MAIN MEASURES: (1) Survivors’ preferences for primary care physician (PCP) and oncologist responsibilities across four types of care: cancer follow-up, cancer screening, preventive health, and comorbid conditions. (2) Survivor-reported visits to PCPs and oncologists.KEY RESULTS: The response rate was 42.1%. Most long-term survivors preferred PCPs and oncologists share care for cancer follow-up (63%) and subsequent screening (65%), while preferring PCP-led preventive health (77%) and comorbid condition (83%) care. Most survivors (88%) preferred oncologists involved in cancer follow-up care, but only 60% reported an oncologist visit in the previous 4 years, and 96% reported a PCP visit in the previous 4 years. In multivariable regressions, those with higher fear of cancer recurrence were less likely to prefer PCP-led cancer follow-up care (OR = 0.96, CI = 0.93-0.98), as did survivors with advanced cancer stage (OR = 0.56, CI = 0.39-0.79). Those with higher fear of recurrence (OR = 1.03, CI = 1.01-1.04) or who preferred oncologist-led cancer follow-up care (OR = 2.08, CI = 1.63-2.65) had greater odds of seeing an oncologist in the last 4 years.CONCLUSIONS: Most cancer survivors preferred PCPs and oncologists share care for cancer follow-up and screening, yet many had not seen an oncologist recently. Survivors preferred PCP-led care for other preventive services and management of comorbid conditions. These findings highlight the important role PCPs could play in survivor care, suggesting the need for PCP-oriented education and health system policies that support high-quality PCP-led survivor care.

Check out the article’s website on Pubmed for more information:

[link-preview url=https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31367870 forceshot=true]

This article is a good source of information and a good way to become familiar with topics such as: cancer survivorship;fear of cancer recurrence;oncology;patient-centered care;primary care.

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