Canada: agreement between patient and proxy information about colorectal cancer therapies.

Proxies, such as next of kin, often provide information to healthcare professionals about a cancer patient they know, particularly when this information is not available from the patient. Understanding the extent to which proxies offer reliable information about patients is important for improving the quality of patient care and also for assessing the quality of research, evaluation, and administrative data when proxy response is utilized. This study determined Levels of agreement between information reported by colorectal cancer patients and by their proxies about complementary and alternative medicine obtained by questionnaire response. Patient-proxy agreement was also compared for conventional therapies, patient demographics, lifestyle, and symptoms.