RESUMO
The aim of this study was to investigate the psychometric properties of the Greek version of FACIT-COST, as well as to assess the levels of financial distress of patients suffering from lung cancer in relation to their quality of life and lung cancer symptom burden. This was a cross-sectional quantitative study. A self-assessment instrument was used to gather the data. The study involved 120 lung cancer patients who were treated using chemotherapy in a day clinic of a General Hospital in Athens. Data were collected with the COST-FACIT-v2 (used to assess the patients' financial toxicity), The 12-item Health Survey (SF-12), and functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-Lung Symptom Index Questionnaire-7 items-version 4 (FACIT-FACT-LCS). Descriptive statistics as well as exploratory factor analysis performed all the statistical analyses, which were conducted using IBM SPSS Statistics 25 and had p-values with a significance level of 0.05. The majority of the participants were male (68.3%), married or cohabitated (81.3%), and had been diagnosed with microcell cancer (90%). The factor analysis resulted in one factor that interpreted 35% of the total variance. FACT-L (r = 0.365, p < 0.001), physical component SF-12 (r = 0.184, p = 0.045), and mental health component SF-12 (r = 0.268, p = 0.003) were positively correlated to FACIT-OST, as expected. The Greek validated COST-FACIT-v2 is a reliable tool in providing rapid assessment of cancer patients' level of financial distress.
