Home visit to women with breast cancer: a strategy to be backed - doi: 10.4025/cienccuidsaude.v9i2.8256

Abstract

This cross-sectional, retrospective, descriptive and quantitative study analysis aimed to analyze the annotations of home visits done to mastectomized women. The venue of the study was a rehabilitation service for mastectomized women in the interior of the state of São Paulo. Between June 16th and August 08th 2008, 821 patient files were searched, and data of 454 home visits carried out between 1992 and 2007 were observed. A previously developed instrument, according to home visits’ scripts, was used for data collection. Descriptive analysis was carried out after consolidation of data. Most visit information reported alterations related to breast cancer. The reasons for not going to the service were mainly business and the difficulty to go to the service. Moreover, most annotations mentioned the presence of support network and absence of relationship difficulty. Home visits were shown to be extremely important, as a strategy to increase the adherence to lymphedema treatment and self-care. They also offer palliative care to patients and families, according to their needs and limitations.