Qualidade de vida, saúde e o autocuidado em homens com câncer
Abstract
Cancer represents the third leading cause of death among men, behind only deaths arising
from diseases of the circulatory system and violent external causes. The advancement of
medical technologies has provided greater prospects for controlling and curing cancer, which
means that patients live longer with the disease, the treatment and the impacts arising from
it. Because of this, the issue of health quality of life for men with cancer has become a central
issue in the field of oncology. Therefore, the main objective of this manuscript is to analyze
the quality of life, global health and self-care in men with cancer. The theoretical approach
to the research objective will be carried out mainly from health psychology studies and the
behavioral analytical approach. Three different chapters make up this manuscript: the first
reports an article that discussed indicators of mortality and illness in males in Brazil. The
second chapter is a narrative review of international literature, regarding changes in the
quality of life of men undergoing cancer treatment. For the third chapter, field research is
proposed, with a cross-sectional design, descriptive and correlational objective, regarding
data collection, field research was used and for data analysis, the quantitative approach. The
instruments applied were the script for consulting the medical record on sociodemographic
characteristics and the clinical history of medical treatment, to assess quality of life the
WHOQOL-bref, referring to global health PROMIS level 1 will be used, referring to sexual
function the sexual quotient – male version (QS-M) and to describe the sample's health care
repertoire, a semi-structured interview guide. In the main results, it was found that the
general average quality of life of the sample was low (M= 29.5 and SD= 3), the four domains
evaluated by the instrument also achieved low scores, especially in the physical domain, the
worst commitment (M=22.9 and SD=9). In PROMIS I, it was observed that five of the
thirteen care indicators were detected in 50% or more of the participants, namely: anxiety
(86%), anger (80%), depression (71%), thoughts/ repetitive behaviors (69%) and substance
use (59%). Concerning the sexual satisfaction indicator, obtained with the QS-M, the general
score was low (M= 31.5 SD= 1.8), with a poor to unfavorable performance pattern
predominating, in 45% of participants. At a confidence level of 95% and significance of
0.05, the parametric hypothesis tests used showed that the average quality of life is not
distributed homogeneously when evaluated by clinically relevant groups. The main selfinjured health problems were: hypertension with 31%, anxiety with 25%, depression with
19%, diabetes with 18%, lung/respiratory problems with 10%, overweight with 8%, heart
disease with 5% and other problems of health with 2%. Both risk behavior and protection
were found to be in use more frequently among those at risk. The cluster analysis revealed
two patient profiles: “highly critical” and “moderately critical”. It is concluded that the
overall health of men undergoing cancer treatment requires attention, not only due to the
reduction in the quality of life that they may be exposed to, but above all because they have
a scarce repertoire of self-care that they frequently present, in addition to exposing
themselves to risk factors. to health. Health professionals working in oncology must be
aware of these dimensions of the relationship between masculinity and health to provide
assistance that is more in line with the needs of these subjects.
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