Do patients know their diagnosis of cancer?

Aims: Patients' lack of knowledge about their diagnosis still exists. We aimed to examine whether, in our population, the patients' age, marital status, level of education, occupation, gender and diagnosis influence their knowledge of their diagnosis. Additionally we aimed to see if knowing their diagnosis affected their QoL. Patients and Methods: We used a sociodemo-graphic questionnaire and the EORTC (European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer, Study Group on Quality of Life) QLQ-C30 (Quality of Life Questionnaire of cancer) to obtain information about the total QoL Score. Results: We found that in a total of 238 cancer patients, 163 patients knew that they had cancer or a tumour, and 75 did not. We observed statistically significant differences between the ages, the education level, the occupation (employed/unemployed), and the diagnosis of those patients that knew their diagnosis from those that did not. For the variables total of QoL Score, marital status and gender we did not observe statistically significant differences between the patients that knew their diagnosis and those that did not. The association between knowledge of diagnosis and occupation was very small as was the association between knowledge of diagnosis and diagnosis. The association between knowledge and age was moderate and between knowledge and education was small. Conclusions: In our sample, knowledge was influenced by age (older, less knowledge), education level (less years, less knowledge), diagnosis (prostate cancer had more patients that did not know their diagnosis) and occupation. Knowing their diagnosis did not diminish patients' QoL.