Financial Hardships Experienced by Cancer Survivors: A Systematic Review

With rising cancer care costs, including high-priced cancer drugs, financial hardship is increasingly documented among cancer survivors in the United States; research findings have not been synthesized.

We conducted a systematic review of articles published between 1990 and 2015 describing the financial hardship experienced by cancer survivors using PubMed, Embase, Scopus, and CINAHL databases. We categorized measures of financial hardship into: material conditions (eg, out-of-pocket costs, productivity loss, medical debt, or bankruptcy), psychological responses (eg, distress or worry), and coping behaviors (eg, skipped medications). We abstracted findings and conducted a qualitative synthesis.