Can the caregiver replace his/her elderly cancer patient in the physician-patient line of communication?

UNLABELLED

GOALS OF WORKS: Only few studies have focussed on the information needs of senior cancer patients. The aim of this study was to evaluate to what extent caregivers perceive their elderly cancer patients' informational needs.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Between June 2004 and February 2005, at the National Cancer Institute of Aviano (northern Italy), we asked 112 elderly cancer patients naïve for treatments (age >65 years) and their 112 accompanying family members to fill in a self-administered questionnaire exploring the patient's information needs and his/her information-seeking behaviour.

MAIN RESULTS

Elderly patients (60 males and 52 females, mean age 72 years) were mostly affected by genital-urinary (27%) or breast/gynaecological (25%) cancer. Caregivers were usually females (71%), daughters/sons (45%) and/or partners (41%). The interobserver agreement for the information request regarding cancer diagnosis and disease management, for the selected information sources consulted to acquire knowledge and for the reasons for seeking further information between the elderly patients and their caregivers were unsatisfactory to poor.

CONCLUSIONS

Our results show that caregivers misunderstand the informational needs of their patients. Therefore, elderly patient information preferences cannot be predicted accurately by talking to relatives. The recommendation to oncologists is to be more responsive to the needs of both elderly cancer patients and their family members.