Social Support and Breast Cancer Recurrence: Is there any Association?

Breast cancer is the most prominent cause of women's mortality due to cancer and is one of the most serious and commonly diagnosed cancers among Iranian women. Also, social support plays a vital role in breast cancer patients' lives and their diagnosis and treatment processes. This study aimed to determine the associations between social support status and the recurrence of breast cancer in women breast cancer referred to the Breast Diseases Research Center in Motahari Clinic in Shiraz, Iran in 2018.

This was an applied and descriptive-analytic study on women with breast cancer referred to the Breast Diseases Research Center in Motahari Clinic in Shiraz, Iran in 2018. A sample of 221 patients in two groups of 117 non-recurrence patients and 44 patients with recurrence and metastasis were selected randomly. A localized standard questionnaire was used to collect the required data. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS 24.0.

Based on the results, there were significant differences between the two studied groups of patients with and without recurrence in terms of the means of social support and all of its dimensions (P-value<0.05); the means of social support and all of its dimensions in the group of patients without recurrence were higher than those in those with recurrence. Also, 88.6% of patients in the group without recurrence received high social support, while in the group of patients with recurrence, only 11.4% of them received high social support.

The results showed that the breast cancer patients studied without recurrence had higher social support. Therefore, to improve the studied patients' health, we recommend providing the patients with a safe and secure environment, giving accurate and complete responses to the patients' questions, providing continuous psychological counseling, etc.