Perception of Iranian Patients with Cancer, Their Relatives, and Health Care Professionals Towards Length of Life and Quality of Life: A Local Survey

Recently, therapeutic decision-making in oncology is changed to a big challenge for both patients and involved oncologists due to an increase in available treatment modalities with a variety of benefits or adverse effects.

The current study aimed at comparing the perception of treatment priorities regarding lengthening of survival time or maintenance of the quality of life (QoL) among patients with cancer by health care professionals (HCPs).

The current cross-sectional study was conducted on patients with cancer, their relatives, and healthcare professionals in the referral cancer center of Omid affiliated to Isfahan University of Medical Sciences. To identify treatment choices, priority, and related variables influencing their opinions, all participants were interviewed using a standard and valid questionnaire in Persian. The collected data were analyzed using the SPSS software version 20, and the P-value less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant.

A total of 299 participants, including 100 patients, 109 relatives, and 90 HCPs (74.2% nurses, 20.2% physicians, 5.6% others) participated in the study. The priority of treatment between survival time (66.1% for relatives vs. 47.9% for patients and 21.3% for HCP) and QoL (33.9% vs.52.1% and 78.7%) was significantly different between the three groups (P < 0.001). Most of the HCPs, patients, and their relatives believed that the physician is the only person who should accept the responsibility of treatment choices and process (98.9% vs. 100% and 98%, respectively; P = 0.002).

Among the Iranian population, both the length of life and QoL were valuable; however, it was observed that patients with cancer and HCPs preferred mostly to expand the QoL, while the length of life was more valuable for relatives. Also, all patients, their relatives, and HCPs preferred to choose the physicians as the decision-makers. The results of the study can be helpful in choosing treatment regimens and designing clinical trials.