Cancer Research, Statistics, and Treatment (Sep 2024)

Awareness about COVID-19 among patients with cancer attending the Department of Radiation Oncology: A prospective observational study - ACROS

  • Abhay Chakravarty,
  • Abhishek Basu,
  • Manu G. Madhav,
  • Chayan Paul,
  • Soumya Dey,
  • Siddhartha Adhikary

DOI
https://doi.org/10.4103/crst.crst_305_23
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 7, no. 3
pp. 308 – 317

Abstract

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Background: It is important to ascertain awareness about coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) among patients with cancer, especially in rural areas in India. Objectives: The primary objective of the study was to assess the awareness of COVID-19 in terms of knowledge, attitude, and practice of patients with cancer, and the secondary objective was to correlate these findings with respect to the baseline demographics. Materials and Methods: We conducted a survey from November 2022 to February 2023 at the Outpatient Department of Radiation Oncology of Burdwan Medical College and Hospital, Purba Bardhaman, West Bengal, India, a rural tertiary care hospital, using a prevalidated questionnaire (ACROS questionnaire) to assess the knowledge, attitude, and practice regarding COVID-19 among patients with cancer. All patients aged ≥ 18 years were interviewed from November 2022 to February 2023. The final questionnaire comprised five domains – demographics, diagnosis, knowledge (K), attitude (A), and practices (P) relevant to COVID-19. Data analysis was done by SPSS version 26.0 software. Kruskal-Wallis test as well as correlation and association were used to compare the difference in knowledge, attitude, and practice with respect to demographic characteristics. Results: A total of 274 questionnaires (97.9%) were considered for the final analysis. The median age of the participants was 52 (interquartile range 44-60) years. Statistically significant associations were observed in cases of attitude with occupation [P, 0.030; odds ratio (OR), 2.000; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.071-3.735] and practice with occupation (P, 0.024; OR, 2.543; 95% CI, 1.458-4.438), along with the socioeconomic (SE) status (P < 0.001). A weak correlation was found between knowledge and attitude [Pearson correlation coefficient (r), 0.261; P < 0.001], knowledge and practice (r, 0.373; P < 0.001), attitude and practice (r, 0.207; P, 0.001), and practice and SE status (r, 0.203). Conclusion: With a drop in the incidence of COVID-19 and related deaths, patients with cancer in rural India began flouting the precautionary measures against COVID-19.

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