The Effect of Telephone Counseling on the Compliance and Satisfaction for Advanced HCC Patients Receiving Sorafenib

Sorafenib is an oral multikinase inhibitor with antiproliferative and antiangiogenic effects used as systemic treatment in patients with unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma. Although sorafenib has demonstrated many clinical benefits in patients, its adverse cannot be ignores. This drug occasionally causes severe adverse events (AEs), which include hand-foot skin reaction (HFSR), hypertension, diarrhea, anorexia, fatigue, weight loss, and so on. Although most adverse events are reversible, they can significantly impact a patient's quality of life and occasionally result in dose reduction or discontinuation of therapy Patients are also more likely to remain on treatment if they are guided over the difficult initial 4\~6wks of therapy during which time the development of adverse events following sorafenib treatment initiation are most likely to occur. Patient education, proactive management and establishing and maintaining open communication between patients and the nurse are crucial to the effective management of these adverse events. This study design is a randomized controlled trial and 64 patients will be randomized to one of 2 groups in a 1:1 ratio. 32 patients will be enrolled into the controlled group and the rest of 32 patients will be enrolled into the intervention group. The intervention group will be received the routine telephone calls of six times at intervals of once a week during 10\~15 minutes (from a well-trained nurse) The purpose of this study is to confirm whether an effective intervention that telephone counseling and education by a nurse can increase drug compliance for patients with HCC who is taking Sorafenib and is to use for developing individual educational program as a fundamental data that can be applied for patients taking Sorafenib after investigating patient satisfaction by "The Satisfaction with information about Medicines Scale(SIMS)" tool.