TY - JOUR
AR - COR-2021-7-102
TI - Perception of Cancer Patients and Their Attendants during Pandemic of COVID-19: An Experience from Tertiary Care Center, Pakistan
AU - Afshan , Asghar Rasheed
AU -  Malik, Babar
AU - Muzaffar, Narjis
AU - Vallecha, Aneeta
AU - Sara, Sattar
AU - Naimatullah, Najeeb
JO - Clinical Oncology and Research
PY - 2021
DA - Fri 09, Jul 2021
SN - 2613-4942
DO - http://dx.doi.org/10.31487/j.COR.2021.07.02
UR - https://www.sciencerepository.org/perception-of-cancer-patients-and-their-attendants-during-pandemic_COR-2021-7-102 
KW - Cancer patients, perception, pandemic, cancer patients’ attendant
AB - Introduction: Cancer patients have concerns about treatment during COVID-19 pandemic virus as well as 
its impact on their health. This survey was conducted to ascertain perception of cancer patients and their 
attendants during this pandemic. 
Methods & Results: This cross-sectional study was conducted at Oncology OPD of SIUT, from May 2020 
to July 2020 on cancer patients along with their attendants. Among 306 patients, 68.9% received 
chemotherapy. In response of each question, 1st one belonged to patients and 2nd was related to attendants. 
Only positive answers are reported here. For increasing gap of chemotherapy during the pandemic COVID-19, 58.3% vs 38.4% agreed with doctor recommendation. For start of single agent chemotherapy instead of 
combination regimen, 41% vs 19% agreed. For hospitalization 41.5%, vs 47.7% depicted inclination 
towards admission whereas for mental health questions, 63.7% vs 51.3% were neither afraid nor had 
psychological issues 79.7% vs 25.8% respectively. About COVID-19 testing, 66% vs 22.5% wanted to be 
tested. If results turned out positive, 82.2% vs 24.7% would go in isolation.
Conclusion: This study provides evidence of perception of cancer patients with their attendants from 
resource restrained country. Our study confirms that for disease like cancer, fear of the illness is always 
more paramount than any infection.