Fear of disease progression in cancer patients: A review article

Although there have been significant advances in cancer treatment in recent years, and the prognosis of many cancers has improved, families and patients are greatly burdened with the diagnosis or treatment of cancer. One of the main stressors is fear of disease progression (FoP) or fear of disease recurrence (FoR). Therefore, the aim of this simple review study was conducted to explain the FoP in cancer patients.

In the first step, Scopus, SID, Magiran, Iran doc, CINAHL Google Scholar, Web of sciences, PubMed databases, and Persian keywords such as fear of disease progression, fear of recurrence, cancer and English keywords such as cancer, fear of progression, fear of recurrence, were searched.

In various studies, FoP has been shown to vary from 23 to 87% and to be related to age, sex, marital status, occupation, family history of malignancy and presence of cancer, cancer type, treatment type, residence and activity level, smoking, and disease stage.

Based on the results of the present study, with proper planning by policy makers and planners in the field of cancer patients, it is possible to reduce the FoP in these patients, and these measures definitely have positive effects and impact on their health.