Association of Gastrointestinal Chemotoxicity to the Performance Status of Breast Cancer Patients: A Preliminary Study

Abstract

Abstract Background Chemotherapy is still the first line treatment for breast cancer patients. Gastrointestinal chemotoxicity such as nausea and vomiting remain as distressing adverse side effects. However, not many data discussed the impact of these side effect on the performance status of the patients. Thus, the aim of the study is to evaluate the Association of gastroenteric chemotoxicity to the performance status of Breast cancer patients. Method A cross-sectional study was done in our general hospital starting from October 2018 until February 2019. The patients included are those diagnosed with breast cancer and have undergone chemotherapy. Chemotherapy toxicity is assessed using the National cancer institute common toxicity criteria (NCI-CTC) with a cut-off above 1 point. and Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) was used to assess the patient´s performance status. The ECOG has a scoring system (0-5). Which 0 defines as fully active and 5 as dead. The correlation between both variables was analyzed with spearman using SPSS version 24.0 Result Data are collected from 32 patients with mean age 47.72±9.095. Out of the patients, only 6.2% experienced nausea and vomiting. The performance status data showed 46.9% scored 0, 50% scored 1, and only 3.1% scored 2. The association of these chemotoxicity to the patient´s status performance is less significant with r = 0.223, p-value=0.221 Conclusion Chemotoxicity did not occur in most patient. However patients still tends to have restricted in physically strenuous activity but ambulatory and able to carry out work of a light or sedentary nature. The study resulted in minimum coherence and significance from both variables. Therefore further study with a larger sample size should be done.