The following is an excerpt from Chapter 1 of the 2010 Oncology Nursing Society book, A Guide to Oncology Symptom Management (pp. 1-14), edited by Carlton Brown, RN, PhD, AOCN®.

As the number of older Americans increases, so will the number of incident cancers. According to the US Bureau of Census in 1993, projected estimates indicate that 14% of the total population will be over the age of 65 by the year 2010, with Florida having the highest percentage of elderly at almost 20%. With this forecasted increase in the number of older Americans with cancer, it is important...

The oral route is compromised for nearly all patients at the end of life (EOL). This article reviews the benefits and burdens of the usual alternative routes of medication deliverywhen the oral route fails and presents a case study on the use of a new innovation for the rectal delivery of medication to control EOL symptoms. A 62-year-old male hospice patient with end-stage metastatic prostate c...

We tested a theoretical model of the relationships of hospital context, nursing unit structure, and patient characteristics to patients' perceptions of the extent to which nurses met their expectations for management of troubling symptoms. In our sample of 2,720 patients randomly selected from 278 nursing units in 143 hospitals, we found that patient age was positively associated with patients'...

OBJECTIVE To determine the value of international prostate symptom scoring (IPSS) system in management of patients with benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) in Jos, Nigeria. MATERIALS AND METHODS This was a prospective study of 104 newly diagnosed patients with BPH from June 2006 to July 2007. Patients' symptoms were initially evaluated by administering a pretreatment IPSS/Quality of Life Score...