COST: Calculating The Financial Pain Of Cancer
Sunday, June 22, 2014 - 05:50
in Health & Medicine
Cancer care has had lots of known side effects but one goes less discussed - the "financial toxicity", which is the expense, anxiety and loss of confidence confronting those who face large, unpredictable costs, often compounded by decreased ability to work. Writing in Cancer, a team of University of Chicago cancer specialists describe the first tool to measure a patient's risk for, and ability to tolerate, financial stress. The researchers named their patient-reported outcome measure COST (COmprehensive Score for financial Toxicity) and uses 11 questions, assembled and refined from conversations with more than 150 patients with advanced cancer. read more