ESTRO 2025 - Abstract Book

S4159

RTT - Patient experience and quality of life

ESTRO 2025

1071

Digital Poster Holistic needs in Radiotherapy Late Effects: ‘I need help with my symptoms’ Vicki Hands Beacon Radiotherapy, Somerset NHS Foundation Trust, Taunton, United Kingdom

Purpose/Objective: The holistic needs assessment (HNA) is an important tool in identifying patient concerns before, during and after treatment. Currently, concerns of patients living with late effects of treatment are poorly documented or understood. HNA data is a powerful tool to identify key concerns allowing appropriate clinical services to be developed to meet patient needs. Material/Methods: Adult patients, who had received radiotherapy and were not on active treatment for cancer, completed validated Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) including a Concerns Checklist (HNA) prior to their first appointment in a late effects clinic. Anonymised data was collated. Data dashboards and descriptive statistics were used to analyse the data. Results: Data was received from 444 individual referrals. Average age 65 (range 32-91), average time since diagnosis 67 months (range 3-657 months), cancer diagnoses included prostate, breast, head and neck, endometrium, cervix, lymphoma, colorectal, oesophagus, bladder, leukaemia, sarcoma, and vagina. Analysis showed that people with late effects have many physical concerns, the top 4 are ‘fatigue, pain, sleep problems and hot flushes’. ‘Thinking about the future’, an emotional concern, was the 5th most reported issue. ‘Managing my symptoms’ was the most common information need reported. Physical concerns were more frequently reported in those with late effects than at diagnosis or the end of treatment. Being ‘tired, exhausted or fatigued’ was consistently the top concern regardless of the point in the pathway. Pain was reported more frequently in people with late effects than at diagnosis or the end of treatment. Practical and family concerns seemed to be important at the point of diagnosis but not so by the end of treatment or beyond into late effects. *Please note, we are still collecting data and we will likely have more data for analysis, including discharge data. Conclusion: People with the late effects of radiotherapy have a high symptom burden and are seeking help to manage their symptoms HNA data can be used to develop pathways to manage symptoms ‘Late effects’ has now been added as a category to the national electronic HNA so the needs of this patient cohort will now be collected at scale, aiding our understanding and promoting service development. Future Developments HNAs and PROMS are repeated at discharge from late effects services. Analysis of this data will help us to understand if our late effects services and interventions are effective.

Keywords: Unintended consequences of cancer, burden,