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


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.


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.
Giacalone
Annalisa
A
Division of Medical Oncology A, National Cancer Institute, Via Franco Gallini 2, 33081, Aviano (PN), Italy. omaoffice@cro.it.
Talamini
Renato
R
Spina
Michele
M
Fratino
Lucia
L
Spazzapan
Simon
S
Tirelli
Umberto
U
D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001294:Attitude to Health; D017028:Caregivers; D003142:Communication; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D033181:Information Dissemination; D007558:Italy; D008297:Male; D020380:Needs Assessment; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000451:nursing* / Q000523:psychology*; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires