Background
The World Health Organization (WHO) reported that the cancer burden had globally increased to 18.1 million, of which 9.6 million people died from cancer in 2018 [
1]. Cancer is a leading cause of death in 28 countries. The highest death rates occur in North America, Northern and Western Europe, and especially in the Netherlands, Denmark, China, Australia, New Zealand, and Hungary [
1]. Similarly, cancer is a main cause of death in Taiwan [
2]. According to 2019 Taiwan Health and Welfare Report, cancer has been the major cause of death in Taiwan for over 30 years, and lung, liver and colorectal cancer are the three most common cause of cancer death [
3,
4]. In 2019, malignant tumors accounted for 24.9% of deaths among individuals older than 65 years [
2]. With Taiwan’s ageing population and growing cancer prevalence, the health care needs of elderly individuals with cancer requires further investigation.
Over the past few decades, researchers have extensively focused on cancer treatment. With advanced medical technology, the care needs of cancer patients have gained more attention. Health care needs, such as health education, disease prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and hospice care, are the needs that can benefit from health care services [
5]. Hoekstra, Heins and Korevaar [
6] divided the care needs of patients with cancer into four domains: medical, informational, psychological, and proactive contact. Health care needs differ from patients to patients. For example, patients may express more psychological concerns at the time of diagnosis than they would during treatment. Individual differences in age, country, region, marital status, education, occupation, and others can also considerably affect the care needs of these patients [
7,
8].
Most cancer studies have focused on supportive care needs related to cancer site, treatment type, or time since diagnosis [
9‐
11] Furthermore, elderly patients have not been specifically analyzed as most studies targeted adult patients [
12,
13]. But the care needs of older people, especially needs for physical care and pain elimination, are more complex than those of other age groups [
14,
15]. In addition, studies have found that those with lung cancer have higher supportive care needs than other patients [
16‐
21]. However, limited information is available on how to meet the supportive care needs of patients with lung, liver, or colon cancer. Studies have focused only on patients with lung cancer [
3,
9,
18] and not on those with liver or colon cancers. Thus, further investigations are required for supportive care in Taiwan’s lung, liver, or colon cancer patients. The present study specifically assessed these patients’ health care needs and analyzed their underlying factors, including age, cancer site, cancer stage, and functional status.
Discussion
The strength of this study is that it is a nationwide survey to investigate health care needs in elderly patients with lung, liver, and colorectal cancer. The results provide a reference indicating the medical services that will be required in Taiwan. Policies for improving the health care of cancer patients aged > 85 years are imperative. Sanson-Fisher and Girgis [
12] reported that the likelihood of reporting care needs did not differ between individuals aged 18–30 and 61–70 years and those aged 71–90 years. However, the results of the present study in Table
1, which investigated people aged above 65 years old, are similar to those of Ahn and Kim [
15], who demonstrated that age is positively correlated with the need for and use of general health care services among elderly patients [
15,
31]. In Taiwan, age is a major predictor of health care needs [
32]. Among cancer patients, older age indicates poorer health status [
33], which may be the reason why the oldest-old patients reported higher health care needs than the other patients did.
This study demonstrated a significant relationship between KPS and supportive care needs (Table
2). This is consistent with the results from previous studies, showing that cancer patients who experience the most serious symptoms resulted in decreased physical function in daily life [
34]. Patients with higher functional status have lower care needs, whereas patients who are unable to care for themselves have higher care needs, especially physical and psychological needs, as they experience psychological disorders and physical limitations in fulfilling daily life needs. A Taiwan study indicated that functional disability is a major predictor of care needs among elderly patients [
32]. People past middle age and with functional difficulties are significantly more likely to report poor mental health [
35]. Thus, caregivers must provide more psychological and spiritual support to patients with poor functional status and must assist with their daily physiological problems.
Compared with patients with primary lung or colorectal cancer, those with primary liver cancer have more health care information and sexuality needs. Information and education are among the key domains of unmet supportive care needs in people with chronic liver disease [
36]. Furthermore, health care professionals are the most common source of information, rather than family and friends [
37]. Caregivers must address the distinct information needs of various subsets of patients with cancer as the incidence rate of liver cancer has increased over the past 30 years [
38]. Providing intensive nursing care can also be useful in helping patients to find information and motivation related to healing the disease [
39]. Intensive nursing care includes reporting of symptoms and abnormal patient conditions quickly to prevent complications [
40].
Although the present study’s regression model did not find a significant correlation between overall support needs and cancer stage, patients with lung, liver, and colorectal cancer in stage IV exhibited higher physical daily living needs, compared with patients in stages 0–II (Fig.
1d). Another study discovered that patients with cancer in stages III or IV had more unmet supportive care needs than did patients with other cancer stages [
41]. A meta-analysis revealed that patients with advanced or terminal-stage illness experienced more severe pain than patients who continued to receive treatment [
42]. The frequent pain experienced by these patients may have increased their physical care needs. Thus, health care providers may pay attention to pain management in patients with advanced cancer to reduce excessive medical expenditures.
The present study revealed that patients receiving radiotherapy require more care (Table
3). Other studies have shown that cancer patients who receive radiotherapy treatment have psychological and sexual needs [
10,
43]. For patients with primary rectal cancer, preoperative radiotherapy can increase sexual dysfunction and reduce daily activity levels [
44]. Cancer patients who receive multiple treatments have more health care needs than those with single treatment because the combination of treatments has more side effects and complications such as hair loss, sleep disturbance, loss of appetite and shortness of breath [
45]. Most cancer patients in this study demand more health care needs support than others as they receive not only radiotherapy but also multiple treatments at the same time. Future studies must further investigate the care needs of patients undergoing radiotherapy to provide services that improve their quality of life. Several previous studies reported that providing information to patients and their families about the condition of the disease improves adaptation during treatment and show positive results and reduces disease recurrence [
46‐
48]. Therefore, one of the main roles of nurses is to provide education to patients.
Oldest-old patients had higher overall care needs than young-old patients, especially in health system information needs and sexuality needs (Fig.
1a). Aging is related to a higher risk of health problems, which necessitate access to information and utilization of health care services [
49]. With the ageing global population, health-related information is required to address the health conditions of elderly people [
50], as oldest-old patients could not take care of themselves and had additional psychological and physical needs related to daily living, including limited functional ability, limited ability to walk, the presence of over one disease, and living alone [
15]. Therefore, they require total supportive care [
51,
52]. Regarding sexuality needs, oldest-old patients had higher sexuality needs compared with other two groups (Fig.
1a). A longitudinal study conducted at Duke University reported that 15% of older people were engaged in sexual activity [
53]. However, aging not only causes physical function degradation [
54] but also affect psychological factors, such as dissatisfaction of body images, or low self-esteem, which may indirectly influence sexual function [
55]. Other authors have explained that lower level of sexual needs reflects the lack of attention from a partner or family toward patients during treatment [
56]. As a result, oldest-old patients had higher sexuality need compared with other two groups.
This study followed appropriate procedures and is a nationwide survey of the care needs of elderly patients with lung, liver, and colorectal cancer in Taiwan. Nevertheless, the following limitations should be considered. First, the caregivers of participants—for example, their family members or primary nurses—may have significantly influenced participants’ survey responses, and this potential influence was not analyzed for any correlations with the variables of this study. Second, only patients with lung, bronchus, tracheal, liver, intrahepatic bile duct, or colorectal cancer were included in this research. The care needs of elderly patients with other primary cancers may differ from those of the study group. Third, the study was cross-sectional in nature. We did not consider the care needs of patients at different time points.
Conclusions
Most of the care needs of elderly patients with lung, liver, and colorectal cancer were in the physical and daily living domains. The health care needs of elderly patients with these kinds of cancers differed according to age, primary cancer site, cancer stage, and general function in daily life. Therefore, appropriate measures should be used for elderly patients with these kinds of cancers, especially the oldest-old and those with poor function, primary liver cancer, and advanced cancer.
This study provided a vision and direction for health administrators; for example, care- and treatment-related decisions should be made with elderly patients and their families through collaboration and discussion. This quantitative study examined the information access and sexuality needs of the oldest-old patients with lung, liver, and colorectal cancer. To the best of our knowledge, the present research was the first to call attention to the problems associated with extreme population aging foreseen in Taiwan. Appropriate measures should be implemented for elderly patients with lung, liver, and colorectal cancer whose care needs are distinct from those of younger patients with these kinds of cancers, and their health care needs should be met as fully as possible. Given that health care needs differ by age, primary cancer site, and functional status, guidelines should be established to determine standard operation processes for the care provided to elderly patients with lung, liver, and colorectal cancer in Taiwan.
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