Engaging Elderly Breast Cancer Patients: The Potential of eHealth Interventions

Abstract

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women in the world and age is the strongest risk factor for breast cancer in women. Incidence of breast cancer still increases even if at a slower rate in women aged over 50 years until age of 80 years (DeSantis et al., 2011). Actually the incidence of breast cancer represents a critical health concern in the growing aging population and requires specific evidence-based recommendations (Petrakis and Paraskakis, 2010; Biganzoli et al., 2012). From a psychological point of view, some authors found that older breast cancer patients have more difficulty in adjusting to breast cancer and related treatments than younger women and these differences resulted from several age-related factors