Survivorship care for colon cancer patients Towards more involvement of the general practitioner

There is a call for a more generalist and personalised approach during hospital-led survivorship care for cancer and a formal role for general practitioners (GPs) is suggested. Evidence that GP-led survivorship care for colon cancer is effective in terms of recurrent disease detection and quality of life (QoL) and patients’ satisfaction is limited. Another development is to empower cancer survivors to be more involved in their rehabilitation. For this, the use of eHealth seems promising.
In this thesis, we presented the design of a randomised controlled trial to examine GP-led colon cancer survivorship care and we reviewed the recruitment of this trial. We conducted a cohort study to assess hospital-led survivorship care for colon cancer concerning patients’ distress, supportive care needs, QoL, and GPs’ involvement. Colon cancer survivors report many symptoms after finishing treatment, but the effect on QoL is limited. GPs provide a substantial amount of care for survivors who receive hospital-led care. Furthermore, we explored GPs’ and patients’ perceptions towards hospital-led and GP-led care and the use of eHealth. While GPs and patients are largely positive about GP-led survivorship care in advance, a part of GPs and patients reject GP-led care when they are confronted with it. They considered eHealth helpful to increase awareness among patients. The I CARE trial will provide more evidence on the effects of GP-led survivorship care for colon cancer and the use of eHealth on QoL. If GPs will be more involved in survivorship care, GPs’ needs should be taken into account.