Thirty-nine percent of cancer patients lack support in dealing with symptoms and side effects, and about a third feel they don't have enough information about their cancer and treatment, according to a survey from the All.Can initiative.
The survey was conducted from January to November 2018 by Quality Health, a U.K.-based specialist health and social care survey, while All.Can provided input. The survey asked 4,000 cancer patients in 10 countries about their experiences.
Five things to know about the survey:
1. Twenty-six percent of respondents said they experienced the most inefficiency in diagnosis. Issues with diagnosis included lack of empathy and poor timing, such as informing a patient they had cancer on Friday but telling them to wait until the following week for more information.
2. Nearly half of respondents felt they were not sufficiently involved in treatment decisions. Thirty-one percent said they were not given enough information on dealing with pain.
3. All.Can recommends more patients receive multidisciplinary care for their cancer. Only 34 percent of respondents who said they needed psychological support actually had that support available, for example.
4. The most common non-treatment-related costs for patients were travel costs (according to 36 percent of respondents) and loss of employment income (26 percent). Some experienced lifelong financial insecurity due to their cancer.
5. The survey only looked at developed countries, such as the U.S. and the U.K., which means the results may not apply to other areas of the world, reports STAT. In addition, the All.Can initiative is funded in part by six pharmaceutical companies.