Participants’ characteristics
A total 220 patients completed the survey questionnaire. The demographic characteristics of the study participants are shown in Table 1. Of all the patients, 108 (49.1 %) were female and 112 (50.9 %) were male. 4.5% of the patients in the study were between 18 and 35 years, 19.5% were between 36 and 50 years, around half the patients (54,1 %) aged between 51 to 65 and 21.8 % aged above 65 years. Most of the patients were married and this rate was 90.5 %. The majority of the patients involved in the study lived in the family home (98.2 %), while the rest lived alone (1.8 %). 6.4% of the patients who participated in the questionnaire had no literacy; about half (49.5%) were primary school graduates, 30 % were middle-high school graduates and 14% were university graduates. While 85% of the patients who participated in the study were not working, 15% were active working. Table 1 also establishes that %48.6 of the individuals had a history of one or more chronic illnesses.
Most of the diagnoses the patients had were gastrointestinal cancers (33.2 %) and breast cancer (26.8 %). Additionally, 41% of these patients were metastatic; 59% were nonmetastatic. The ECOG performance scale of 87 % of patients was 0-1; the rest 2-3.
General information about COVID-19 and considerations on COVID-19 prevention measures
72.7% of participants claimed that they had never heard the pandemic word before, while 24% said they had heard it before. The most commonly expressed sources of knowledge were the written and visual media (TV, newspaper etc.) (89%), the internet (website, social media etc.) (6.8 %) followed by the doctors (4.2%) (Table 2).
The first part of our survey is information questions about the COVID-19 outbreak, as the first two questions in this section are questions based on interpretation; these first two questions are not included in the knowledge score. The information score includes 5 questions in the first section and 6 questions about COVID-19 protection in the second section. As a result, we directed patients to eleven knowledge questions about the COVID-19 pandemic. These questions are shown in table 3. When calculating the knowledge score, only correct answers were accepted from the three options. The total knowledge score varied between 3 to 11, with a mean of 9.88 ± 1.55. Almost all the participants answered the question about where the outbreak first appeared correctly. The majority of the patients (87.3%) reported that the virus had spread through droplets. 90% of patients reported fever, cough and fatigue as symptoms. 90% of patients said yes to the question of whether most patients could survive this infection with early treatment. The majority (85.9%) said yes to the question about whether COVID-19 disease can be more serious in those with chronic disease such as advanced age, diabetes mellitus, hypertension and cancer; 11.4% said they were unsure. 99% of the patients answered the question correctly that they should avoid crowded places and close contact with other people. While 85% of the patients who participated in the survey thought it is beneficial to wear a mask to prevent the transmission of the virus, 10% reported that it was not useful. 68.6% of the patients correctly answered the question of whether people with COVID-19 can transmit the virus to others when they do not have a fever and cough. While 16.8% stated that they were not sure; 14.5% said it cannot be transmitted. Our question is that children and young adults are not affected by COVID-19, so they do not need to take action; while 86.4% stated that this statement was wrong. The majority of patients (99.1%) responded correctly to our question that hands should be washed at least 20 seconds to prevent contamination. 95.5% of the patients answered the question as to how many days the people who come into contact with someone who is infected with the coronavirus should be observed in quarantine, saying fourteen days.