Impact on Quality of Life of a Telemedicine System Supporting Head and Neck Cancer Patients: A Controlled Trial During the Postoperative Period at Home

Abstract

This study adds to the sparse evidence that telemedicine may be beneficial for the quality of life of cancer patients.

Internet-based support programs to alleviate psychosocial and physical symptoms in cancer patients: A literature analysis

“…Except for one internet-based support program [26], all programs were facilitated by a moderator. The moderator's role varied and included facilitating a discussion and/or introducing new topics in a support group [33,35], being the expert to ask questions [10,23,27,36,37] or having an active role in the intervention such as chatting, discussing, and mailing with participants [24,27,30,31,34]. Two studies [28,29] did not describe the role of the moderator.…”

“…Seven studies analyzed cancer patients with all disease stages (stages I-IV), whereas four studies only included patients with locally or locally advanced cancer (stages I-III) [24,28,31,32]. Five studies did not specify patients' disease stage [23,29,30,33,34]. Six studies included solely patients who had completed cancer treatment during their follow-up [24][25][26]28,31,35], one study only included patients during treatment [27] and two studies patients in all treatment phases [30,34].…”

“…All but one study [34] provided patient education within the program. The majority of the programs provided the opportunity to communicate with peers [10,23,25,27,[29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37] and/or professionals [10,23,24,27,28,30,31,[34][35][36][37]. Exercises such as cognitivebehavioral homework and coping-skills training were part of the program in five studies [23][24][25][26]32].…”

“…Table 2 shows the characteristics of the internet-based support programs. Three different types of programs could be distinguished: social support groups [29,31,[33][34][35], online therapy for psychosocial/physical symptoms [24][25][26]32], and online systems integrating multiple services such as information, support, communication, and coaching services [10,23,27,28,30,36,37]. All but one study [34] provided patient education within the program.…”

“…Four studies contained patients with various tumor types [25][26][27][28], of which breast cancer patients constituted 39-64%. The remaining studies were performed in patients with prostate [24,29], head and neck [30], and gynecologic cancer [31]. Nine studies included only women and two studies only men [24,29].…”