Compliance with intravenous chemotherapy and some factors associated in oncologic adult patients

Abstract

According to literature, the noncompliance rates in cancers chemotherapy are high (10 % - 80 %), which makes this treatment ineffective resulting in a raise of the morbidity, of the mortality and of the health care costs. However, in Colombia there are no studies about it. Objective: To establish the prevalence of compliance with intravenous chemotherapy on adult oncology patients that started and finished the treatment between January of 2011 and January of 2012 in the Hemato-Oncology service of a general hospital. Specifically, we sought to characterize the sample and recognize the associated factors of noncompliance. Sample: 107 cancer patients that met the inclusion criteria. Method: Study with a quantitative approach, non-experimental, cross exploratory. The statistical analysis was done with the program SPSS making an analysis of the central tendency measures, the frequency distribution, and contingency tables applying the chi-square (X2) test and Fisher’s test. Results: The prevalence of noncompliance of chemotherapy was 68 % and the prevalence of compliance was 32 %. Disease stage was found to be an associated factor. Conclusion: Noncompliance has a high prevalence in the studied sample, indicating the importance of bigger scale studies to gain nation-wide information on the prevalence of the phenomenon, as well as the associated factors, to generate proposals of appropriate interventions to he Colombian population considering the role of psychologists in the development and implementation of these strategies and interventions because it should not be forgotten that compliance is a behavioral issue.