Cancer survivorship in Brazil from providers' perspectives.

Abstract

e13860 Background: Previous research highlights the need to create culturally tailored strategies for comprehensive survivorship care in Brazil. Preliminary results of a national survey to assess survivorship practices among Brazilian providers are presented. Methods: Brazilian oncology physicians and nurses received an anonymous survey link via WhatsApp professional groups and were requested to share it with their networks in a snowball sampling. It was also promoted at Brazilian oncology conferences. This study was deemed exempt by the Institutional Review Board of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and approved by the Comitê de Ética em Pesquisa - Comissão Nacional de Ética em Pesquisa (CEP/CONEP) in Brazil. The survey was built on Research Electronic Data Capture (REDCap), had up to 46 questions (branching logic), and was based on published literature. The survey was available in Portuguese and English. Providers were excluded if they declined participation or chose to skip all survivorship-related questions. Descriptive statistics were utilized to summarize the findings. Results: Between 08/13/24 and 12/17/24, the online survey was open for data collection. The survey response rate cannot be calculated due to the recruitment methods. One hundred and ninety-four providers met the inclusion criteria; the mean age was 42.3 (±9.9) years, 52.6%(102/194) were female, 65% (126/194) were physicians, 14.9% (29/194) nurses, and 20.1% (39/194) did not identify their roles. Attending healthcare professionals represented 64.4% (125/194) of participants. Twenty-nine percent (56/194) worked in academic institutions, and 26.3% (51/194) at government-certified institutions to treat cancer. Nearly 61% (118/194) reported that patients with cancer diagnosis wait more than 1 month to initiate treatment in their services, 70% (136/194) considered a cancer survivor “patient who completed cancer treatment with no evidence of disease” and 59.8% (116/194) never consulted a survivorship guideline. When asked to rank topics they discuss with treated patients, ‘Follow-up to detect disease recurrence or progression’ was the topmost, while ‘Screening for new primary tumors’ was the least. Roughly 20% (40/194) of providers reported that medical oncologists/hematologists or surgeons conduct follow-ups of patients who completed treatment with curative intent in their service, and 3.6% (7/194) reported primary care providers/family medicine specialists provided follow-up care. No participant responded that a nurse specialized in oncology provided survivorship care. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that survivorship care is not well structured in Brazil. Creating culturally tailored survivorship recommendations is crucial to optimize providers’ practices and survivors’ care nationwide.