Fatigue control in metastatic colon cancer treated with capecitabine and oxaliplatin.
e19628 Background: Fatigue is one of the most frequent symptoms in cancer patients, characterized by profound fatigue that is not relieved by rest. This symptom can be identified at the time of diagnosis and could affects up to 90% of patients undergoing cancer treatment. There are some instruments available in the literature that can characterize the presence of fatigue through clinical questioning. Methods: Considering the large population of patients with metastatic colorectal cancer treated with chemotherapy and the prevalence of fatigue in these patients, this study evaluated the presence of fatigue in 27 metastatic colon cancer patients before the first, second, third and fourth cycles of fist line palliative chemotherapy regimen containing CAPOX (capecitabine and oxaliplatin) by applying the evaluation questionnaire FACIT-F fatigue. Results: The results post Friedman chi-squared test demonstrated that there was no improvement of fatigue during these four cycles of CAPOX palliative chemotherapy (p=0,2574). The FACIT-G analysis demonstrated no worsening of quality of life (p=0,2411) during and between the four cycles of chemo. All different parameters included in FACIT-F questionnaires: emotional (p=0,2629), physical (p=0,3199), familiar (p=0,1456), functional (p=0,8662) and specific fatigue topic (p=0,7569) confirmed no difference between the cycles. Conclusions: Despite the metastatic stage of colon cancer patients and concurrent chemotherapy treatment, there was no fatigue improvement during the four first CAPOX chemo cycles courses and there was the maintenance of quality of life.