Mobile based care support applications effect symptom management and on quality of life among patients undergone breast cancer surgery

The use of information technologies in the management of problems encountered in the treatment process of breast cancer patients is still up to date. The semi-experimental study, whose purpose was to determine the effect of patients undergoing breast cancer surgery on symptom management and quality of life, was completed with 30 enterprise and 30 control group patients. The mobile-based care support system was introduced to the study group patients before surgery, follow-up visits and after the first month. The control group, did not perform a different practice in the hospital. Data; it was collected scales for evaluating symptom management, quality of life and questionnaires. In the evaluation of the data, Mann Whitney U, Kruskall Wallis Variance analysis, the significance of the difference between the two averages in dependent and independent groups, one-way variance analysis and correlation test were used. In the first measurement, no significant difference was found between the enterprise and control group patients in terms of arm circumference, shoulder function, pain, sexual adjustment, body image, anxiety and quality of life. In the last measurement, the anxiety and pain levels of the study group patients were found to be significantly lower than the control group. In addition, in same measurement, the body image, sexual adjustment and shoulder mobility scale mean scores of the study group patients were higher than the control group. In the end measurement, control group were found to have significantly higher total quality of life and all sub-dimension scores than the enterprise group. The enterprise group was found to have high scores on mobile-based care support system. It was also determined that the characteristics of the enterprise group patients did not affect the changes in symptom management and quality of life in the last measurement. The results obtained that mobile-based care support system is effective in reducing the symptoms of patients in the surgical treatment process and increasing their quality of life. In addition, the results show that the application is "usable" by individuals with different introductory features.