Family caregivers of patients with colorectal cancer frequently face varied supportive care needs, including informational, psychological, social, and health service–related requirements. The investigators designed this randomized controlled trial to determine whether a tailored smartphone-based educational program could reduce the magnitude of those needs compared with routine care.
This research was an experimental randomized controlled trial conducted at two teaching hospitals affiliated with Iran University of Medical Sciences in Tehran. The trial compared an active educational intervention delivered by smartphone to routine care for family caregivers of patients with colorectal cancer.
A total of 80 family caregivers were enrolled and randomly assigned to either the intervention group or the control group. The trial population comprised adult caregivers associated with patients treated for colorectal cancer at the participating hospitals. Details on specific inclusion or exclusion criteria and baseline characteristics beyond the randomized allocation were not reported in the abstract.
The intervention consisted of a smartphone-based educational program explicitly developed to meet caregivers' identified supportive care needs. The control group received routine care as provided by the participating hospitals. The abstract does not provide a session-by-session breakdown, duration of each educational module, technology platform used, or adherence metrics; those specifics were not reported in the source abstract.
Primary outcome assessment used the Supportive Care Needs Survey–Partners and Caregivers (SCNS-P&C). The SCNS-P&C total score ranges from 39 to 195, with higher scores indicating greater supportive care needs overall and within each domain. The instrument includes multiple dimensions; the abstract highlights four domains reported in the results: health care service needs, psychological and emotional needs, work and social needs, and information needs. Measurements were taken at baseline and 4 weeks after the intervention.
Data were analyzed with descriptive statistics and between-group comparisons using t-tests. Repeated-measures ANCOVA was applied to assess changes over time between groups. Analyses were conducted in SPSS version 16. Statistical significance was defined as p < 0.05; reported results for primary comparisons reached p < 0.001.
Compared with the control group, caregivers who received the smartphone-based educational program demonstrated significantly greater reductions in total supportive care needs at 4 weeks. Reductions were also significantly greater in each of the four reported domains: health care service needs, psychological and emotional needs, work and social needs, and information needs (all comparisons p < 0.001 according to the abstract). The magnitude of change, effect sizes, and confidence intervals were not provided in the abstract.
Within the 4-week follow-up reported, the smartphone-delivered educational intervention was associated with meaningful decreases in reported supportive care needs among family caregivers of patients with colorectal cancer when compared with routine care. The authors suggest that smartphone-based educational interventions may represent a promising and scalable approach to augment caregiver support. The abstract does not report long-term follow-up, cost, implementation barriers, or user engagement metrics; these aspects would be important to evaluate in full-text or subsequent studies.
The study received ethics approval from the Ethics Committee of Iran University of Medical Sciences (IR.IUMS.REC.1402.13) and was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. All participants provided written informed consent. The authors declared no competing interests.
This study is reported by Nemati H, Ehsani M, Ashghali Farahani M, Brant JM, Haghani S, et al., and published in Support Care Cancer (2026 Sep 5;34(10):932). PubMed PMID 42700222; DOI 10.1007/s00520-026-11149-0.
Note: The rewritten content summarizes the information presented in the article abstract and bibliographic record. Specific intervention content, participant demographics, detailed statistical outputs, and longer-term outcomes were not reported in the source abstract and therefore are not included here.