How adverse events and permanent medication stoppages affect changes in patients' beliefs about oral antineoplastic agents.

Background: Patients with advanced cancer often experience adverse events related to oral antineoplastic agents (OAAs) and permanent OAA medication stoppages, yet it is unknown how these factors impact medication beliefs. Such beliefs about OAA therapy may lend insight into decisions about continued cancer treatment near the end of life.

Purpose: To explore relationships that adverse events and permanent OAA stoppages have on medication beliefs during the first 12 weeks following new OAA initiation.

Design: A secondary data analysis from a National Cancer Institute-funded randomized controlled trial testing an intervention to promote symptom management and OAA adherence.

Setting/subjects: Patients ≥ 21 years of age initiating a new course of OAA medication were recruited from six United States Comprehensive Cancer Centers. This analysis was based on a subset of patients with advanced disease (N = 60).

Measurements: Beliefs about Medicine Questionnaire, Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events, and medical records of permanent OAA stoppages.

Results: Significant decline in beliefs regarding the necessity of OAA medications existed between patients experiencing three or more adverse events and those experiencing a permanent OAA stoppage.

Conclusions: Beliefs about the necessity of OAA medication change when physicians stop OAA medication or the patient experiences three or more adverse events. Concern regarding OAA medication did not change in response to medication stoppage or adverse events for this sample. Perhaps, patients with advanced cancers may be more accepting of adverse events that occur along the treatment trajectory and are not concerned about OAA medication once it is stopped. Findings suggest the importance of physicians' discussions of adverse events and decisions to permanently stop OAA medication as a means of transitioning to a new phase of cancer care that may include palliative or hospice considerations, given that beliefs about medication necessity are changing during these threats to cancer treatment.