Supportive Care Needs Trajectories in Patients With Advanced Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer Receiving Chemotherapy: A Longitudinal Study

Background: The supportive care needs trajectories in patients with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) during chemotherapy and the related factors have yet to be explored or addressed in the literature. ＜br＞ Purpose: This study was designed to investigate supportive care needs trajectories in patients with advanced NSCLC receiving chemotherapy and the association between the sociodemographic and disease characteristics of these patients over the four cycles of chemotherapy. ＜br＞ Methods: For this longitudinal study, 95 patients with advanced NSCLC were recruited using convenience sampling at a medical center in Taiwan. The supportive care needs of the participants were assessed in each of the four chemotherapy cycles using the Needs Evaluation Questionnaire–Chinese version (NEQ-C) with 23 dichotomous items on the day before and the seventh day after the end of each cycle. Group-based trajectory modeling was applied to identify the classes of supportive care needs trajectories, whereas chi-square test