Participants

Participants were enrolled at a comprehensive cancer center in northern Italy within a period of 2 months in 2016. Inclusion criteria were: (i) age between 40 and 75 years old; (ii) diagnosis of non-metastatic prostate cancer; (iii) absence of major psychiatric disorders; (iv) undergoing external beam radiotherapy for prostate cancer; (v) written informed consent for the study.

The choice of recruiting patients undergoing radiotherapy was related to the consideration that in this phase patients performed already a sufficient number of consults with different clinicians, and are not too close to the moment of diagnosis yet still in treatment.

This study was carried out in accordance with the recommendations of Good Clinical Practice guidelines (International Conference on Harmonisation, 2016) with written informed consent from all subjects. All subjects gave written informed consent in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. The protocol was approved by the Ethical Committee of the European Institute of Oncology.

Patients fitting inclusion criteria were approached by their treating physicians, and proposed to take part in the study after explaining the study aims and procedures.

An overall number of 21 consecutive prostate cancer patients responding to inclusion criteria were contacted over a one-month period. Eleven patients refused due to time constraints (either for them or for the person who accompanied them to therapy) related to family or work organization or because they were not interested in the study. Ten patients gave their consent and underwent the semi-structured interview (see Tables ​Tables1,1, ​,22 for characteristics).

Socio-demographic and clinical characteristics by patient.

PTCA, Percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty.

Summary of clinical characteristics.

RPNNS, radical prostatectomy not nerve sparing; RPNS, radical prostatectomy nerve sparing; PLND, pelvic lymph node dissection; ADT, androgen deprivation therapy; LHRH, Luteinizing hormone-releasing hormone.

Four patients underwent surgical treatment in the same hospital where the study was conducted. The other three underwent surgical procedures elsewhere. Three patients did not have surgery.