Abstract
Introduction: Breast cancer has a high prevalence, constituting a major cause of mortality in women around the world. Health literacy has a vital role in the self-care of chronic diseases such as cancer and is an essential element in the ability of each person to engage with health promotion. The aim of this study was to determine effect of health literacy counselling on self-care in women after mastectomy.Methods: This study is a randomized, controlled, clinical trial carried out on 72 women with breast cancer after mastectomy in Fars province. The eligible women entered the study using convenience sampling and were then divided into an intervention and a control group through randomized blocks of four. Health literacy questionnaire and self-care questionnaire were distributed among the participants before, immediately after and three weeks following the intervention. Data analysis was performed in SPSS ver.13.Results: The results showed no significant differences between the two groups in terms of their health literacy and self-care scores before the intervention (P=0.299 and 0.059). A comparison of the mean values showed a greater increase in the mean score of health literacy and score of self-care immediately and three weeks after the intervention in the intervention group compared to the control group. Also, the mean score of the dimensions of self-care in chemotherapy increased over time in the intervention group.Conclusion: The findings of this study confirm the higher effectiveness of counseling with a health literacy approach on overall self-care in chemotherapy and all its dimensions.
Highlights
Breast cancer has a high prevalence, constituting a major cause of mortality in women around the world
This study was completed with participation of 64 women with breast cancer after mastectomy who had been to the first session of their chemotherapy
After using Man-Whitney’s test to ensure the normality of the assessed variables, and the Chi-square test were carried out and did not show a significant difference between the two groups with regard to mean age, education, occupation and income; in other words, the two groups matched in terms of these variables (Table 1)
Summary
Breast cancer has a high prevalence, constituting a major cause of mortality in women around the world. The main treatment involves breast surgery in the form of lumpectomy or mastectomy followed by chemotherapy.[4] Chemotherapy is an important systemic therapy with an increasing use in the treatment of cancer This technique is the first choice for controlling and preventing the progress of cancer, but has severe sideeffects that occur due to physiological changes in the body organs and systems.[5] The complications of chemotherapy include nausea and vomiting, fatigue, hanges in palate, alopecia, sexual dysfunction, memory loss, attention problems and inability to adhere to chemotherapy.[6,7,8] Chemotherapy may have the greatest effect on patients’ quality of life and disrupt their physical, psychological, social and spiritual well-being.[9] Finding a way to reduce the severity of these complications is very important. Self-care is one of the key ways for reducing these problems.[10]
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