Communication about incurable illness to spouses lacking

Communication between health care professionals and the husbands or partners of women with incurable cancer is lacking, according to a study conducted by researchers from Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm and other sites in Sweden and Iceland.

The researchers found that male spouses of patients with incurable cancer are either told of their wife’s illness at a late stage or not at all.

In a population-based follow-up, the researchers sent questionnaires to 907 men whose wives died of cancer; 691 agreed to participate in the study and 672 completed the entire survey. More than half of participants’ partners died of breast cancer (58% of 691).

The incurable stage of their wife’s cancer was reportedly never disclosed to 20% (134 of 672) of the participants. Compared with widowers of women diagnosed with ovarian cancer, those whose wives were diagnosed with breast cancer were twice as likely not to be informed of the incurability of her illness (RR=2.2; 95% CI, 1.4-4.6).

Compared with 45% of men who were informed of their partner’s incurable illness within two months before her death, 21% were told within one day up to one week before her death.

In the majority of cases (79%) the physician informed the husband of their wife’s incurable illness, whereas 11% were informed by their wife and 6% by other health care personnel.

Fourteen percent of widowers (96 of 668) did not think the next of kin should be told immediately when the physician determined the incurable nature of the patient’s cancer, according to the researchers.

Thirty-nine percent of husbands did not want their wife to be informed of her incurable cancer immediately after the physician was certain. – by Stacey L. Adams

J Clin Oncol. 2008;26:3372-3379.