Abstract

Despite of vaccination is a highly effective way of preventing certain infections and widely recommended in patients' with cancer, vaccination rate are not high enough. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the attitude of medical oncologists towards vaccination in their daily practice and predictors of vaccination practice in oncology. A structured questionnaire is formed to evaluate the daily practice of vaccination. Medical oncologists actively working in Turkey were invited to study by emails, SMS messages and direct phone calls. Questionnaires were filled and the data were stored with an online survey platform 273 medical oncologists participated the survey. Influenza, Pneumococcus and hepatitis B were the most commonly recommended vaccines (87.1%, 72.8%, 67.0%, respectively) in daily practice. Lung, lymphoma and breast cancer are the pathologies to which medical oncologists give priority while recommending vaccination (68.1%, 68.1%, 24.6%, respectively. Participants prefer to recommend vaccination to patients in remission/follow-up (68.4%) or before starting therapy 64.1%. Patients' age and comorbidities were not related with rate of vaccination. Only 23.4% of the participants thought that their recommendations on vaccination were efficient and satisfying. Lack of time during outpatient clinic visit and lack of knowledge or experience about vaccination are the most common limitations during recommending vaccination. There is a positive correlation between experience in the field and evaluating patients for vaccination (r = 0.390, p < 0.001), on the other hand, there is negative correlation between number of patients daily cared and evaluating patients for vaccination (r= -0.080, p = 0.18). Experience with autologous or allogeneic bone marrow transplant patients is related with more tendency to evaluate patients for vaccination (p < 0.001). Status of experience in oncology, especially in bone marrow transplant units and total number of patients exposed daily are important predictors of vaccination practice in oncology. Similar with the data in other fields, there is also a huge heterogeneity in medical oncologists' attitude towards vaccination.

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