Adherence and patients’ attitude toward oral anticancer drugs: A prospective series of 226 patients focusing onto targeted therapies.

Abstract

e17543 Background: Patients’ adherence has been identified as a challenge in oncology and hematology practice. Hormone therapy data in breast cancer suggest insufficient adherence and poor persistence. Limited data is available for targeted therapies such as tyrosine kinase (TK) and mTOR inhibitors whereas poor adherence to TK treatment was linked to treatment failure in GIST and CML. Methods: We report the result of a prospective survey in 226 patients (pts), with solid tumors and hematologic malignancies receiving oral anticancer therapy including chemotherapy or hormone therapy (CT), and targeted therapies (TT). Treatment duration and setting (adjuvant vs metastatic), cancer type, age, co-medication were analyzed. Patients were given a 15-item questionnaire and asked to anonymously answer questions regarding their attitude towards oral anticancer drugs. To analyze adherence, patients were asked whether they voluntarily or not missed any drug dosing during the last month. Results: 226 patients (median age 65.5 y.o) participated, 115 with TT and 111 with CT, with a median time of drug intake of 10.5 months. Both TT and CT patients stated to be well informed about treatment modalities in (92%), mostly by their oncologist or hematologist (87%). Written information was more frequently given in TT pts (67.0 vs 27.0%, p<0.0001). TT pts declared to be more often fully adherent to therapy (84.3 vs 66.7%, p=0.01) despite experiencing more side-effects (p<0.0001) and taking more concomitant oral medication (p=0.029). The mean treatment duration was 28.0 vs 20.3 months in TT vs CT pts (NS), but in both groups non-adherence was observed at any time since initial prescription. Conclusions: Despite advances in patients’ information leading to better treatment adherence in TT pts, efforts are still warranted such as the onset of dedicated staff for early and prolonged monitoring of outpatient anticancer oral therapy.