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.