Voluntary reporting to assess symptom burden among Yemeni cancer patients: common symptoms are frequently missed.

Background: Adequate symptom assessment is necessary to relieve the high symptom burden experienced by cancer patients. However, health care professionals may depend only on patient's voluntary reporting (VR) to assess symptoms and therefore some symptoms may be missed.

Objective: To assess the symptom burden experienced by Yemeni cancer patients by using VR and systematic assessment (SA).