Family functionality and coping strategies in patients with breast cancer

The family is a system variable structure in which its members interact, grow and develop throughout life; always subject to external factors that influence positively or negatively on its composition and interactions so that family functioning is the ability to face and overcome each of the stages of the life cycle and crises being experienced. Within the study of family functioning has become very important to be demonstrated in several studies the influence on the health of its members.1–5 The assessment of family functionality in family medicine has specific characteristics that differentiate it from which can be performed by other disciplines, because it has the fundamental purpose of comprehensively understanding the context in which the pathology is produced by allowing reorient their treatment different solutions to those traditionally offered, contributing elements to the biopsychosocial vision that characterizes familiar3,4 medical attention. Breast cancer is suffering from a stressful event that threatens significantly in different areas and decay can occur daily activities and cause negative emotional states in patients; so it is important to evaluate and understand the impact of the disease and treatment on perceived welfare of the patient; that assessment should be comprehensive and individualized to each woman considering the physical, social and psicológico6,7 appearance.