The behavior of Turkish cancer patients in fasting during the holy month of Ramadan.

Objective: Fasting during the holy month of Ramadan is one of the major obligations for all adult Muslims. We performed a survey of Turkish Muslim cancer patients to examine the extent of their fasting status and to compare various clinical characteristics of fasting and non-fasting cancer patients during the month of Ramadan.

Methods: This study was conducted on 701 adult cancer patients who attended ambulatory patient care units answered the questionnaires.

Results: The population comprised 445 women (63.5%), and the median age was 54 years. Before diagnosis of cancer, 93.1% of the patients used fast consists of completely (78.3%) and partial (14.8%). However, 15% of cases were fasting on the day of interview, either partially (7.4%) or completely (7.6%) with equal distributions. Patients who were females, those with good performance status, those without any comorbid disease, who had non-metastatic disease, those with history of surgery, those treated with radiotherapy and those being treated with oral chemotherapeutic agents were more likely to be fasting than others. The fasting ones had more prevalent among patients with lymphoma, urogenital cancer and breast cancer; conversely, the rate of fasting status among patients with lung and gastrointestinal cancer was quite low. Only 20.8% of all patients asked their physician whether it was alright for them to fast and physicians generally had a negative attitude towards fasting (83.2%).

Conclusions: Majority of cancer patients are not fasting during the month of Ramadan, and a small part of patients consult this situation to their physician.