363P - Effect of financial distress and mental well-being of patients with early vs advanced oral cancer on informal caregiver's quality of life: A prospective real-world data from public health sector hospital

Background

Oral cancer is distressing cancer that affects physically and emotionally and is associated with an adverse impact on mental well-being and financial distress. Informal caregivers are a significant source of support to the patient during and after the treatment of cancer patients. Caregiving may become a burden leading to poor quality of life among caregivers. The study intends to evaluate the effect of a patient's financial distress and psychological well-being on the caregiver's health-related quality of life in early vs advanced oral cancer.

Methods

All oral cancer patients treated with curative intent at our institute from September 2019 to March 2022, with a minimum of 6 months follow-up and disease-free, were included in this study, along with the informal caregivers of the patients. Caretakers not suffering from chronically ill and incurable diseases are included in the study. Patients and caregivers were categorised into early-stage (Group A) and advanced-stage (Group B) based on the clinical staging of patients with oral cancer. The patient's financial distress was evaluated using the COST FACIT questionnaire, and Psychological well-being using DASS 21 questionnaire. The quality of life of the caregivers was evaluated using the WHOQOL BREF questionnaire.

Results

A total of 79 patients and their caregivers were included. The median age is 49 among patients and 38 among caregivers. Twenty-one were in Group A; the rest, fifty-eight, were in Group B. It was observed that the patient in group B has Significant financial distress (p<0.05). There was no difference in HRQOL among caregivers of both groups. There was no correlation between financial distress scores and the caregiver's QOL. There was no effect of the patient's psychological well-being on the QOL of caregivers in group A. However, patients with depression in group B had a significant impact on the caregivers' QOL in the psychological (p <0.05) and environmental domains (p <0.05).

Conclusions

The lack of psychological well-being of patients with advanced-stage cancer significantly influences informal caregivers' psychological and environmental quality of life domains.

Clinical trial identification

Editorial acknowledgement

Legal entity responsible for the study

The authors.

Funding

Has not received any funding.

Disclosure

All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.