Patients See Benefit From Self Reporting Symptoms Online

Sometimes, the time between a cancer patient’s office visits can drag on for weeks, meaning that it can take awhile for a doctor to hear about new symptoms or side effects of medication. These weeks are between appointments can have dire consequences, and can even make the difference between the life and death of the patient.

However, researchers at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) have reported that even the most critically ill cancer patients are willing to detail their symptoms online. This means that doctors connected into the program were able to instantly gain access to the data and make adjustments when necessary.

“Cancer care has become increasingly complex, causing office visits to become more compressed. This makes it challenging for the clinician to comprehensively access each patient’s symptoms in that brief window of time,” explained Dr. Ethan Basch, a clinical oncologist at MSKCC. He went on to say that “because cancer therapies can be highly toxic, early detection of symptoms and timely treatment is vital. What is exciting to us about online self reporting is that patients can alert clinicians to crucial symptoms in real time.”

107 patients who were receiving outpatient chemotherapy at MKSCC were enrolled in the study, which went on from June 2005 to March 2006. Although 28 percent of those studied were over the age of 70, the study showed that gender, age and cancer stage had no effect on the patient’s log-in rates to the Symptom Tracking and Reporting (STAR) system.

98 percent reported that the system was easy to use, 90 percent said that STAR was useful and 77 percent agreed that it helped improve the quality of their talks with doctors. All of the patients used the STAR equipped waiting room kiosks at least once.

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