Coping with a newly diagnosed high-grade glioma: patient-caregiver dyad ă effects on quality of life

Patients with high-grade gliomas (HGG) and their caregivers have to ă confront a very aggressive disease that produces major lifestyle ă disruptions. There is an interest in studying the ability of patients ă and their caregivers to cope with the difficulties that affect quality ă of life (QoL). We examine, in a sample of patient-caregiver dyads in the ă specific context of newly diagnosed cases of HGG, whether the QoL of ă patients and caregivers is influenced by the coping processes they and ă their relatives use from a specific actor-partner interdependence model ă (APIM). This cross-sectional study involved 42 dyads with patients ă having recent diagnoses of HGG and assessed in the time-frame between ă diagnosis and treatment initiation. The self-reported data included QoL ă (Patient-Generated Index, EORTC QLQ-C30, and CareGiver Oncology QoL), ă emotional status, and coping strategies (BriefCope). The APIM was used ă to test the dyadic effects of coping strategies on QoL. Coping ă strategies, such as social support, avoidance, and problem solving, ă exhibited evidence of either an actor effect (degree to which the ă individual's coping strategies are associated with their own QoL) or ă partner effect (degree to which the individual's coping strategies are ă associated with the QoL of the other member of the dyad) for patients or ă caregivers. For positive-thinking coping strategies, actor and partner ă effect were not observed. This study emphasizes that the QoL for ă patients and their caregivers was directly related to the coping ă strategies they used. This finding suggests that targeted interventions ă should be offered to help patients and their relatives to implement more ă effective coping strategies.