O perfil social e previdenciário: sua influência na qualidade de vida dos pacientes em radioterapia

Abstract

Recent technological advances have increased the effectiveness of radiotherapy, leading to a satisfactory management of cancer patients with longer patient survival; however, little attention is given to their quality of life and to managing the emotions of these individuals, triggered by their social condition. Identifying social security profile of cancer patients allows us to know the inequalities in health as well as identifying opportunities for preventive interventions with high potential for effectiveness, being imperative to reduce inequities regarding the access to health, since they are ethically unacceptable, avoidable or remediable; that can affect everyone. Objectives: To analyze the social security profile of cancer patients submitted to radiotherapy, adjuvant or concomitant to chemotherapy as well as to correlate them with their quality of life. Method: Observational, cross-sectional, analytical study with a quantitative approach, carried out with 60 patients diagnosed with cancer undergoing radiotherapy. Two evaluative questionnaires were used, the Graciano&Lehfeld socioeconomic and social security profile questionnaire and the WHOQOL−BREF generic quality of life questionnaire. Results: The findings of this study has showed that during treatment there was a significant negative effect on quality of life, in the physical and psychological domains, impacting with positive correlations between schooling x quality of life and retirement x quality of life, revealing that social and social security issues have considerable influences on these specifications. Conclusion:The importance of the multidisciplinary team's communicative and assertive behavior, carried out through welcoming, qualified and humanized listening, respecting the uniqueness of each patient and a comprehensive care assessing the quality of life, can minimize the factors that affect daily life and ensure compliance to the treatment.Knowledge of social aspects and the impact on these patients' quality of life can lead to the implementation of public policies, guidance on medication use, symptom management and psychological follow-up and reduction of radiotherapy fractionation when according to the patient's conditions, culminating in less displacement, especially in more severe cases of scarcity of resources, so that better care can be taken of the patient cancer patient understanding the impacts of the disease, as well as ways to avoid the possible reduction in their quality of life.