#FacultySeminar: Joan Prades/ Paula Manchon-Walsh

Assessing the gap between the needs experienced by cancer survivors and the care they receive from health services: the SUMA study
Joan Prades  and Paula Manchon-Walsh- Health Services research in cancer group

Background: Oncological treatments are reducing mortality and contributing to increased patient survival, although many patients experience physical, mental and social needs arising from the treatments themselves that are not addressed in a standardised way by healthcare services. Follow-up of disease-free survivors focuses on disease control (e.g. recurrences, second neoplasms) rather than on their quality of life.

Research question: To what extent do health services address the quality-of-life-related health problems experienced by cancer survivors?

Objectives: To analyse the existing gap between the set of quality-of-life-related needs experienced by cancer survivors from 1 to 4 years post-diagnosis and the care received from primary and secondary healthcare services.

Method: First, a cross-sectional observational study of breast and colorectal cancer survivors was launched to evaluate the quality of life for the so-called intermediate survival period. Sewcond, an audit of healthcare responses contrasted a selection of variables identified by patients with the healthcare responses recorded in the Electronic Health Records.

Results: Both cancer types shared prominent problems in sexual functioning, symptom awareness, and health behaviour change. When compared to the normative population, HRQoL was worse in both cancer types across most domains, particularly among breast cancer survivors. No significant differences were found in return-to-work domains among working-age survivors.Patient-reported functioning problems were inconsistently reflected in clinical records, with psychosocial issues being substantially underdocumented compared with physical problems. However, once documented, most problems triggered a healthcare response, particularly those related to pain and anxiety.

Hosted by Laura Costas – Infections & cancer group

Joan Prades (BA Political Science, PhD Faculty of Medicine) is a senior researcher specialised in the analysis of healthcare services and policy working at the Catalan Institute of Oncology (ICO) and the Health Department of Catalonia (Spain) as well as associated professor of the University of Barcelona (UB). He has coordinated a number of initiatives devoted to increase health systems’ capacities to tackle different cancer challenges under the framework of different projects and EU Joint Actions such as EPAAC, CanCON, JARC, IPAAC and CRANE.

Paula Manchon-Walsh, MD, PhD, is a specialist in Epidemiology and Public Health with over 18 years of experience evaluating the quality of cancer care within the Catalan Cancer Plan. Her research focuses on cancer surgery centralization, quality assessment of oncological care, adherence to clinical practice guidelines, and cancer survivorship. She currently leads regional quality-of-care evaluations in cancer services and serves as Co-Principal Investigator of a national research project on unmet needs and healthcare responses among cancer survivors. She has also contributed to academic training as Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Barcelona and has supervised doctoral research in cancer surgery and health services research.