Life of advanced cancer patients after knowing the nature of their own disease: a personal experience of seven cases.
To seven patients suffering from advanced cancer who wished to know what their disease was and whose families supported them in their wish, I informed them of the name of the disease and how advanced their case was. After being told they had cancer, not only did the patients become more cheerful to and more trustful of their families, but also they came to place greater confidence in us' doctors and nurses. Their wish to live was strong and they all wanted to have their anticancer therapy continued. At the terminal stage, four of them merely wanted to have their pain relieved, and two of them became depressive when the symptoms of approaching death became evident. But judging from the total clinical course of the seven carefully screened patients, I believe that informing them of the true nature of the disease brought about favorable results.
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D003863:Depression; D005190:Family; D005260:Female; D006738:Hospices; D006801:Humans; D007258:Informed Consent; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000523:psychology*; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D011788:Quality of Life