Quality of life and interpersonal support among adult patients with cancer undergoing chemotherapy at an academic cancer institute.

370 Background: The National Cancer Institute (NCI) defines quality of life (QOL) as “overall enjoyment of life.” Increasingly, cancer treatments like chemotherapy are focused on not only increasing survival time but on maintaining and/or improving QOL. Interpersonal support has been shown to have an impact on QOL. Assessment of both can help focus efforts to improve quality of care for cancer patients. Methods: This study enrolled patients from the Lifespan Cancer Institute at The Miriam Hospital (TMH) in Rhode Island who were adults 18+ and on chemotherapy infusion treatment with an active cancer diagnosis. Patients were randomly selected for an in-person interview during scheduled chemotherapy infusion appointments from February 9 to April 26, 2024. We collected patient demographics and study staff administered the 16-item Quality of Life Scale (QOLS) and 12-item Interpersonal Support Evaluation List (ISEL). Results: Of 432 total eligible cancer patients at TMH, 96 (22%) completed the prospective survey. The average (SD) age was 68.4 years old (10.3). The majority of patients were male (51%), Caucasian (80%), married (65%), on Medicare (62%), diagnosed in 2023 or 2024 (59%), and the most common cancers were gastrointestinal (30%), genitourinary (24%), and breast (17%). Overall, patients demonstrate mostly high satisfaction in certain QOL and interpersonal support domains with variation across others. Over 80% of patients are “delighted” or “pleased” with their material comforts, close family and friends, entertainment, and independence. However, approximately 50% of patients report a mixed or worse level of satisfaction with their health, participation in organizations/public affairs, and active recreation and varying levels of satisfaction with other QOL domains. Over 60% of patients report the highest level of perceived interpersonal support across all domains (appraisal, belonging, tangible) with indication of stronger appraisal support compared to belonging and tangible. Conclusions: Our results indicate a strong satisfaction among patients with their close interpersonal networks rather than external affairs or activities. Satisfaction with health and active recreation among chemotherapy patients is much more variable. These findings suggest possible benefits of wellness and health maintenance programs during treatment. Lowest areas of interpersonal support indicate a need to build more comprehensive support resources for tangible tasks like moving, assisting with chores, or other physical activities and building support groups to increase belonging. Opportunities to build community among chemotherapy patients or utilize clinical social workers will likely improve satisfaction in many of the more low and variable QOL and interpersonal support domains, particularly for patients navigating a new or first-ever cancer diagnosis.