Purpose: This cross-sectional study aimed to describe the responses of cancer patients’ indifferent chemotherapy cycles to the unstructured treatment interruption during the COVID-19 pandemic in China.
Patients and Methods: Data from 156 adult patients with common solid tumors undergoing chemotherapy or ready to begin chemotherapy after surgery before the COVID-19 outbreak were analyzed in the study. Patients’ responses to the chemotherapy interruption and their anxiety were assessed.
Results: Overall, 141 (90%) patients completed the study, and 115 (81.6%) accepted a switch from their previous intravenous chemotherapy to oral chemotherapy. Of these, 29 (65.9%) patients with lung cancer, 25 (86.2%) with gastric cancer, 33 (89.2%) with colorectal cancer and 28 (90.3%) with breast cancer switched from intravenous to oral treatment, heeding their doctor’s advice. Of the participants, 85 (60.3%) patients reported that they had taken at least one kind of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). The hospital anxiety and depression scale (HADS) scores increased in patients with advanced refractory cancer compared with the scores of adjuvant chemotherapy patients (P < 0.05). The prevalence of anxiety was high in cancer patients aged 60 years or older. Furthermore, anxiety was associated with advanced incurable cancer (P  < 0.05), and this finding remained after adjusting for chronic pain. In addition, there were significantly increased scores of anxiety in patients with lung cancer (P  < 0 0.05).
Conclusion: Our study shows that most cancer patients remained relatively stable and had switched from intravenous to oral treatment at home. Among them, an increasing number of patients began to seek CAM as a complementary therapeutic approach. Patients with advanced refractory cancer were more likely to experience anxiety, and lung cancer patients should receive special attention.
Keywords: chemotherapy interruption, complementary and alternative medicine, mental health, COVID-19