Breast cancer is affecting the among women worldwide.They suffered froms physical, psychosocial and sexual impairment after their treatment completion. It reduces their post treatment QOL. Smart devices and wearable technologies are becoming progressively more popular throughout society. m-health technology is the use of smartphones devies to deliver health care and preventive health services.
Study has conducted under 3 phases in hospital of Northern India. In I phase, mixed method approach was used to identify the problems faced by the patients, in II phase mobile app was developed and in III phase, PROBE design to assess the efficacy of mobile app. This includes 170 survivors with stage I-IIIA, who completed adjuvant therapy for 3 months ago. Participants were randomly allocated to mobile app and control group. Participants assesed at baseline, 3 months post intervention and 6 months follow up. The QOL assessed with EORTC QLQ-C30. For fatigue, CTCAE fatigue grades were used. For vaginal dryness, national cancer Institute common toxicity criteria version 5 was also used. For lymphedema, arm circumference was measured by using tmeasuring tape and LENT-SOMA criteria for arm edema was used. Data analysis was done using SPSS version 25.0.
At baseline all health-related outcome parameters were comparable in both the groups. At 3 months follow up, quality of life score was better in app group compared to control group. No significant difference was seen in fatigue and vaginal dryness in any of the groups at 3 months (P>0.05). At 6 months, quality of life, fatigue and lymphedema was improved significantly improved in app group. In multivariate analysis, significantly improvement for fatigue and quality of life was seen in app group compared to control group at 6 months. However, as per intention to treat analysis significant improvement was seen in quality of life, fatigue, vaginal dryness and lymphedema.
Mobile application for breast cancer survivors was effective in improving the quality of life, fatigue, lymphedema and vaginal dryness among the survivors. However, further multicentric-RCTs are required for validation of the results in a larger population.
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