Effect of educational guidelines on reducing chemotherapy induced oral mucositis based on patients’ needs assessment

Abstract

Oral mucositis is a distressing complication of chemotherapy-induced toxicity in cancer patients, it effect on the well-being of patients, demonstrating its negative impact on patients’ quality of life, and may lead to dose reduction among patients. Hence, the present study was conducted to evaluate the effect of educational guidelines on reducing chemotherapy induced oral mucositis based on patients' needs assessment. A quasi-experimental research design (pretest and posttest) has been conducted to achieve the aim of this study. This study was conducted in the inpatients' department at Radiotherapy and Nuclear Medicine Department, affiliated to Ain Shams University. A purposive sample of 70 adult patients was selected based on certain inclusion criteria. A structured interview questionnaire, Oral assessment guide, and Patients' health condition assessment (Patient-related outcomes PROMs) are methods used to collect the data among the studied patients. There was statistically significant improvement in the post-test implementation of educational guidelines as regard patient's mouth care practice with p-value <0.001 and 88.6% of the patients had healthy oral cavity and didn't have any degree of oral mucositis. This study revealed the implementation of educational guidelines has a positive effect on the reducing chemotherapy induced oral mucositis for the patients undergoing chemotherapy.