Abstract
Cancer is one of the most serious and widely distributed diseases. The statistics show that every third Norwegian during his lifetime will get a cancerous disease, and nationally about 20000 get diagnosed with cancer every year.
About 40% recovers, the rest has to live with cancer for shorter or longer time, but all will have a need for treatment and care. Persons that have been diagnosed with cancer often say that they were left to themselves after they had been diagnosed, and after any subsequent hospital treatment. Offer for follow up is imperfect in the primary health service. This article presents results of an investigation about what follow up is provided in each municipality in a Norwegian county consisting of 26 municipalitites. This was done with the aid of a questionary that was submitted by mail to all administrative leaders in the home nursing and to doctors in the 26 municipalities. A total of 46 completed forms were received, 26 from doctors and 20 from home nursing. This corresponds to a reply rate of 74% for doctors and 77% for home nursing. The questionaries were answered thoroughly with a lot of additional remarks. Based on the results one can conclude that the level of planned follow up or offer of such were low to persons with cancer after they had been diagnosed or treated. The results also show that there is given follow up after individual needs, but that this mainly is given after the pasient is the active part and ask for help. There is unclear instructions about the division of responsibility between the primary health services and the hospitals.