The effects of add-on self-care education on quality of life and fatigue in gastrointestinal cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy

BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies

Jun Xie¹  Yinghua Cai²  Qun Lu²  Xiaomin Xu²  Zhenghong Xu²  Tingli Zhu³ 

[1] Department of Oncology, Wuxi People’s Hospital Affiliated to Nanjing Medical University;Internal Medicine Department, Wuxi People’s Hospital Affiliated to Nanjing Medical University;Nursing Department, Wuxi Children’s Hospital;

关键词: Gastrointestinal cancer;    Self-care;    Chemotherapy;    Quality of life;    Fatigue;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12906-019-2800-5

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Abstract Background Gastrointestinal cancer is one of the most common malignancies and imposes heavy burdens on both individual health and social economy. We sought to survey the effect of a self-care education program on quality of life and fatigue in gastrointestinal cancer patients who received chemotherapy. Methods Ninety-one eligible gastrointestinal cancer patients were enrolled in this study and 86 valid samples were analyzed. Data were acquired with a demographics questionnaire, endpoint multidimensional questionnaire and the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) quality of life questionnaire QLQ-C30. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS software. Results The self-care education intervention significantly improved the quality of life with respect to emotional function (p = 0.018), role function (p = 0.041), cognitive function (p = 0.038) and alleviated side effects such as nausea/vomiting (p = 0.028) and fatigue (p = 0.029). Further analysis demonstrated that the self-care education benefited total fatigue, affective fatigue and cognitive fatigue in gastrointestinal cancer patients regardless of baseline depression. Conclusion Our results suggested the beneficial effects of the self-care education in both quality of life and anti-fatigue in gastrointestinal cancer patients under chemotherapy. The self-care education could be considered as a complementary approach during combination chemotherapy in gastrointestinal cancer patients.

【 授权许可】

Unknown