Financial Distress in Patients With Advanced Cancer

Preliminary Study of Financial Distress and Quality of Life in Patients With Advanced Cancer

Status

Completed

Phases

Study type

Interventional

Source

ClinicalTrials.gov

Registry ID

NCT01868100

Acronym

DIFIC

Enrollment

144

Registered

2013-06-04

Start date

2013-03-31

Completion date

2014-06-30

Last updated

2019-05-28

For informational purposes only — not medical advice. Sourced from public registries and may not reflect the latest updates. Terms

Conditions

Cancer, Quality of Life

Keywords

Cancer, quality of life, palliative care, supportive care, Financial distress

Brief summary

Advanced cancer has an adverse effect in virtually all dimensions of patients' lives (physical, psychosocial, spiritual, familial, role function). One of the less frequently explored effects of cancer is its impact on personal finances and the contribution of financial-related distress to overall suffering and quality of life. Financial issues have been recently found to be the second most frequent source of distress identified by cancer patients in a community cancer center context (22%). In the context of continuous increased health care costs, it is likely that the frequency of health care related financial problems will keep rising. The relative contribution of these adverse financial events in advanced cancer patients to overall patient distress is not well assessed and this is particularly true in France. The main objective of this work is to determine the association between financial distress and quality of life of patients with advanced cancer in a Public General Hospital and in a Comprehensive Cancer Center. A secondary objective is to characterize the frequency and intensity of financial distress reported by French cancer patients and their impact on their quality of life.

Interventions

OTHERself-completion questionnaire

Study design

Allocation

Intervention model

SINGLE_GROUP

Primary purpose

SUPPORTIVE_CARE

Masking

NONE

Eligibility

Sex/Gender

ALL

Age

18 Years to No maximum

Healthy volunteers

Inclusion criteria

* Patients must be at least 18 years old and have a diagnosis of advanced cancer which is defined as one of the following: recurrent disease, received \>2 lines of chemotherapy, locally-advanced disease, metastatic disease, or refractory disease. * Patients must have a cancer diagnosis of: breast, colon, lung or prostate. * Patients must be able to understand, read, write, and speak French.

Exclusion criteria

* Clinical evidence of cognitive impairment, as determined by the palliative care physician.

Design outcomes

Primary

Measure	Time frame	Description
Financial distress and quality of life	Cross sectional (one day)	FACT-G; FACT-pal; FACT-sp for the quality of life; Self-assessment of financial distress in a 0 to 10 scale(0 no distress; 10 maximal distress)

Countries

France

Outcome results

None listed

Source: ClinicalTrials.gov · Data processed: Feb 4, 2026