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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Ludoviko Zirimenya, Charles Musoke and Evelyn Hutt
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DOI:10.17265/2328-7136/2015.06.006
The prevalence of cancer and that of HIV/AIDS is increasing in Uganda and throughout sub Saharan Africa. Unfortunately, little is known about the prevalence and burden of symptoms in patients with AIDS-Cancer and Cancer alone at first referral to a palliative care service. This study sets out to compare the prevalence and symptom burden between patients with AIDS-Cancer and those with Cancer only referred to a palliative care setting. Retrospective point prevalence survey of 150 randomly selected charts of patients referred to Hospice Africa Uganda (HAU) as per 2013. Of the 471 eligible patients’ charts, 168 were randomly selected and only 150 were included in the study. A chart review instrument was used to extract information from the charts. Data were entered into Epidata version 3.1, cleaned and analysed using Epidata Analysis and Excel. Of the 150 patients’ records: 78 (52%) had Cancer only diagnosis and 72 (48%) AIDS-Cancer diagnosis. Pain was most prevalent at 91.7% in the AIDS-Cancer group and 100% in the cancer only group. Three quarters reported pain as moderate to severe in both groups of patients. The five most prevalent symptoms in the AIDS-Cancer group were pain (91.7%), social distresses (38.9%), body swelling (27.8%), Anorexia (22.2%) and skin eruption (16.7%) while in the Cancer alone group were pain (100%), body swelling (25.6%), Anorexia (23.1%), social distresses (20.9%) and fatigue (17.9%). The average number of symptoms was 4.8 (2.3) in the Cancer group and 4.7 (2.3) in the AIDS-Cancer group Pain is highly prevalent in both Cancer only and AIDS-Cancer patients. The four most prevalent symptoms namely pain, social distresses, body swelling and anorexia are similar in both groups of patients. Social distresses occur highly in AIDS-Cancer patients.
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