Breast cancer patient compliance with endocrine therapy / 中华内分泌外科杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To investigate the compliance with endocrine therapy(ET) and assess the factors associated with treatment accuracy for breast cancer.Methods 379 patients with hormone receptor-positive breast cancer undergoing complete treatment from Jun.2006 to Jun.2008 in Jiangsu Cancer Hospital were followed up.Factors related to compliance were analyzed.Results Among the 322 (85.0％) patients successfully interviewed,15 (4.7％) patients did not receive ET,43 (13.4％) patients stopped taking drugs after discharge,14 (4.3％)patients had intermittent ET,and the rest 250 patients obeyed 5-year oral ET regularly.The treatment accuracy was 77.6％ (250/332).We found that majority of withdraw occurred within 2 months and within 2 years,accounting for 39.5％ and 48.8％,respectively.Job and education status were relevant to these patients.Moreover,too much concern of adverse drug effects and difficulty of long-term medication were the main reasons to noncompliance.Conclusions ET is effective in hormone receptor-positive breast cancer patients and has been used as a conventional therapy.However,due to the long therapeutic period and lack of medical supervision after discharge,its treatment accuracy and compliances are becoming low,resulting in decreased efficiency.It is therefore necessary to investigate such patients' management to improve the compliance and treatment accuracy of ET.