Our study supports the hypotheses that the impact of cancer on quality of life over a period of time is not necessarily devastating in survivors. As regards the impact of different medical strategies, although our data are consistent with other research supporting the hypotheses that hormone therapy does not cause a decrease in long-term quality of life, differences we observed between hormone and chemotherapy might be caused by the action of confounds we were not able to control for or by the distortion introduced by the design of the present study.

We developed and pilot tested a 12-item questionnaire, to approach the issue of patients' perception on efficacy of oral chemotherapy. An additional question was on 'trade-off' between treatment efficacy and the ease of oral administration. The motivating underlying hypothesis was that oral drugs might be perceived by patients as less effective than when drugs were delivered by injection. The questionnaire was given to 59 patients with advanced breast cancer who received oral chemotherapy. Ninety-percent of patients considered clear and completed the questionnaire. Oral chemotherapy was positively viewed by most patients, perceiving it as advantageous (58%), able to help them feel less ill (77%) and to reduce the effort in coping with the disease (67%). The most important feeling elicited was the sense of freedom. Younger patients (<45 years) required bigger effort to face their illness and expected the most from oral chemotherapy. The questionnaire was shown to be robust, reliable and reproducible instrument in assessing patients' prejudices towards oral anticancer treatments.

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According to the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines, oral morphine is the first choice drug for treating moderate to severe cancer-related pain. The fear of the side effects caused by this drug and the scarce information about prevention and management of these effects are the main reasons for the underuse of morphine. The aim of this paper is to provide a review of the literature on the side effects most frequently present both in the titration phase and during chronic administration of oral morphine and to describe the appropriate treatment.