Assessment of costs related to cancer treatment.

Introduction: Cancer patients and their caregivers incur costs not covered by the Sistema Único de Saúde - SUS(Unified Health System) during their treatment, with expenses related to transportation, symptomatic medications, food, loss of working days, and others.

Objective: To evaluate the costs incurred and not covered for cancer patients and their caregivers during cancer treatment at SUS.

Methods: This is a cross-sectional study of 110 cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and 88 caregivers in the last month prior to their inclusion in the study.

Chemotherapy-Induced Fatigue Correlates With Higher Fatigue Scores Before Treatment.

Purpose: Cancer chemotherapy can induce fatigue in about 20% to 30% of patients. So far, there is very little information as to the predictors of chemotherapy-induced fatigue (CIF). We evaluated potential predictors of CIF in a sample of patients with cancer with several types of solid tumors scheduled to receive chemotherapy according to institutional protocols.