Accepted for/Published in: JMIR mHealth and uHealth
Date Submitted: Nov 16, 2019
Date Accepted: Jan 26, 2020
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
The Quality of Life for Women after First Diagnosis of Breast Cancer Using a Self-Management Support mHealth Application in Taiwan: A Randomized Control Trial
ABSTRACT
Background:
There are over 2 million newly diagnosed patients with breast cancer worldwide with more than 10,000 cases in Taiwan. During 2017-2018, National Yang-Ming University, Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taiwan Breast Cancer Prevention Foundation collaborated to develop a breast cancer self-management support mHealth application (BCSMS App) for Taiwanese women with breast cancer.
Objective:
The aim of this study was to investigate the quality of life (QoL) for women with breast cancer in Taiwan after using the BCSMS App.
Methods:
After receiving their first diagnosis of breast cancer, women with stage 0 to III were randomized into intervention and control groups. Intervention group subjects used BCSMS App and the control group subjects received usual care. Two questionnaires: EORTC QLQ-C30 and EORTC QLQ-BR 23 were distributed to subjects in both arms at baseline and at 1.5 and 3 months. All evaluations were anonymous. Descriptive analysis, Pearson's chi-squared test, ANOVA, generalized estimating equation were used to analyze the data. Missing values with and without multi-imputation techniques were used for the sensitivity analysis.
Results:
A total of 112 women were enrolled and randomly allocated to the experimental (n=53) or the control (n=59) groups. The completed follow-up rate was 89.3%. The demographic data showed homogeneity between two groups in age (range from 50 to 64 years), breast cancer stage (stage II), marital status(married), working status(employed) and treatment status (receiving treatments). The total QoL summary score in QLQ-C30 (83.4 vs. 82.2, p=0.03) and QLQ-BR 23(65.5 vs. 63.1, p=0.04) were significantly increased in experimental group versus the control group at 3 months.
Conclusions:
This research provides some evidence for using a mobile healthcare application to promote the QoL in women in Taiwan after the first diagnosis of breast cancer. The BCSMS App could be used to support disease self-management and further evaluation of whether QoL is sustained.
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