FINANCIAL TOXICITY OF CANCER TREATMENT AND ITS IMPACT ON QUALITY OF LIFE IN TERTIARY CARE PUBLIC SECTOR HOSPITAL
Keywords:
financial toxicity, cancer, economic burdenAbstract
Objective: To study the financial burden of treatment and its consequences in patients suffering from cancer.
Material and Methods: An observational, cross sectional survey was performed, based on convenience sampling,
to assess patient reported financial toxicity (FT) related to cancer treatment. FT related items were measured using
5-point Likert scale on 11-item questionnaire. Total score ranged from 0-44. Lower score indicated higher FT. Arbitrary
cut-off points were selected to differentiate between stress levels due to FT: 0-10 catastrophic stress; 11-20 moderate
stress; 21-30 mild stress; 31 and above no stress.
Results: This study was conducted on 102 patients, 75% were males and mean age of all patients was 40.5 years.
Mean monthly income was Rs.15718. Nineteen (18.6%) patients were unemployed; 19 (18.6 %) were housewives while
09 (9%) were manual laborers. All patients (100 %) were not having enough savings to cover full treatment expenses.
Seventy one percent patients were worried about financial problems while 84 % patients could not meet their monthly
expenses due to treatment costs. Eighty five percent patients were worried about losing job. Only 10% reported to be
in full control of their financial situation. Overall, catastrophic stress was reported by 53 (52 %); moderate stress by 35
(34%) ; mild stress by 10 (10 %) while no stress was reported by only 4% patients .
Conclusions: Majority of patients undergoing cancer treatment at this public sector teaching hospital were poor and
under severe stress that badly affected their quality of life
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
All articles published in the Journal of Medical Sciences (JMS) are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0). Under the CC BY 4.0 license, author(s) retain the ownership of the copyright publishing rights without restrictions for their content, and allow others to copy, use, print, share, modify, and distribute the content of the article even for commercial purposes as long as the original authors and the journal are properly cited. No permission is required from the author/s or the publishers for this purpose. Appropriate attribution can be provided by simply citing the original article. The corresponding author has the right to grant on behalf of all authors, a worldwide license to JMS and its licensees in all forms, formats, and media (whether known now or created in the future), The corresponding author must certify and warrant the authorship and proprietorship and should declare that he/she has not granted or assigned any of the article’s rights to any other person or body.
The corresponding author must compensate the journal for any costs, expenses, or damages that the JMS may incur as a result of any breach of these warranties including any intentional or unintentional errors, omissions, copyright issues, or plagiarism. The editorial office must be notified upon submission if an article contains materials like text, pictures, tables, or graphs from other copyrighted sources. The JMS reserves the right to remove any images, figures, tables, or other content, from any article, whether before or after publication, if concerns are raised about copyright, license, or permissions and the authors are unable to provide documentation confirming that appropriate permissions were obtained for publication of the content in question.
