Abstract

Dr. Maria Lavdaniti*, Eirini Throuvala, Anastasia Foutouloglou, Anna Papadouri and Dimitris Papageorgiou

ABSTRACT

Background: The use of oral antineoplastic agents has become very popular due to the enormous progress in cancer treatment. As the use of oral antineoplastic treatment increases, the problem of non-adherence with treatment also appears to rise significantly. While a large number of studies have focused on the investigation of treatment compliance, only a small number have referred to oral chemotherapy or targeted therapy. The purpose of this study is to assess the adherence to medication in cancer patients undergoing oral chemotherapy and to determine the factors affecting patients? adherence. Methods: This will be a descriptive and non-experimental study. The sample will consist of patients with different types of cancer who are receiving oral chemotherapy. The questionnaire that will be used is the Oral Chemotherapy Adherence Scale (OCAS). The data collection will be conducted at oncology hospitals in Athens and Thessaloniki and in general hospitals in Greece that have oncology departments. Initially, a pilot study will be carried out to investigate the patients? understanding of the questionnaire. The data analysis will be performed using the statistical software package SPSS 21.0 for Windows. A descriptive analysis will be conducted for all variables, and parametric or non-parametric tests will be employed, depending on the normal distribution of the data. Discussion: We expect variability in adherence among the participants. The evaluation of the adherence may be varied by type of tumour, the stage of cancer, and other clinical or demographic characteristics of patients. We expect that this study will provide valuable knowledge that will be useful for healthcare professionals, especially nurses. The results will be extremely significant for Greek nurses towards assessing the adherence in clinical and community settings and planning interventions to enhance the adherence to oral chemotherapy.