One-Third of Incurable Cancer Patients Keep Working
There
are more than one-third of people with incurable cancer who continue to work
despite their fatal illness, a new study reports. What’s more, they are likely
to stay on the job until they grow too sick to keep going, the researchers
found. The severity of a cancer patient’s symptoms is the most important factor
in whether he or she will stop working, researchers reported Dec. 21 in the
journal Cancer.
“The
factor that associated most strongly with no longer working was a high symptom
burden,” said lead researcher Dr. Amye Tevaarwerk, an oncologist with the
University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. “It wasn’t any of
these other things, like where your cancer is located or your gender or the
treatment you are receiving.”
An
estimated 4.8 million Americans of working age have been diagnosed with cancer,
including many who are incurable, according to background notes with the study.
But few studies have investigated how many people choose to remain on the job
even though their days are limited, Tevaarwerk said.
To
investigate this question, Tevaarwerk and her research team analyzed data from
a cancer research project that tracked just over 3,000 patients being treated
for one of the four most common solid tumor types — breast, prostate, colon or
lung. The researchers focused on 668 people of working age with cancer that had
spread to other parts of their body. They found that 236 (35 percent) were
working full- or part-time.
“That
is a fairly high number,” Tevaarwerk said. “These patients, who might have a
life expectancy between a year and five years, continue to be gainfully
employed.”
Tevaarwerk
offered an anecdotal explanation based on the patients she sees as a practicing
oncologist.
“Patients
are probably working for a number of reasons,” she said. “Some might need the
income or the access to health insurance. But, for others work provides a
source of social support, a distraction from their health problems, and a sense
of normalcy in their lives. It’s going to be a complicated mix.”
Corinne
Leach, director of cancer and aging research for the American Cancer Society,
agreed with Tevaarwerk’s assessment.
“Working
can be a good thing for people,” Leach said. “It can be helpful financially,
but also in terms of identity and remaining active. Some people may stop
working so they can spend more time with their family or travel, but others may
have renewed energy to tackle some issue at work that they want to complete
while they still can.”
Tevaarwerk’s
team couldn’t say why these people keep working, as that data wasn’t collected
by the research project. But the study authors conducted a statistical analysis
to see what factors might most influence a person’s decision.
However,
they found that a number of characteristics had no bearing at all on whether
patients kept working, including the type of cancer, the number of locations to
which it had spread, the type of treatment patients were receiving, or the
length of time they’d been dealing with cancer.
Instead,
severity of cancer symptoms proved the most likely factor that would cause a
person to quit their job, the study found.
Fatigue,
drowsiness, memory problems and numbness were the symptoms most associated with
cancer patients no longer working, the researchers found.
This
means there’s a lot that doctors can do to help patients who want to keep
working while they battle cancer, Tevaarwerk said.
She
said, “I can’t change where your cancer is located, but I can sure control your
symptoms, or at least we can try and This is something that is modifiable.”
Based
on these findings, doctors should have a “fairly frank discussion” about the
likely course of a patient’s disease and how much he or she values work,
Tevaarwerk said.
She
also said that if it’s something that they really want or have to do, then she
have to be aggressive in managing symptoms. Leach also added that future
research can help by focusing on how to improve the management of cancer
symptoms.
0 comments:
Post a Comment