Abstract
Disabling fatigue and psychological symptoms of depression or anxiety are commonly
reported by women with treated breast cancer. However, most instruments designed to
assess fatigue do not assess concurrent psychological symptoms. This study compared
the characteristics of two conceptually different, self-report instruments assessing
fatigue to determine the extent to which common psychological symptoms co-exist with
the symptom of fatigue in women treated for breast cancer. Women attending an oncology
day-care facility for adjuvant treatment of breast cancer or ongoing surveillance
post-treatment, completed two self-report questionnaires. The Somatic and Psychological
Health REport-34 items (SPHERE) and the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-Fatigue
(FACT-F subscale-13 items).One hundred and nine women (mean age 52.8 years) completed
both questionnaires and total scores on both fatigue assessment scales, FACT-F and
SOMA-6, were highly correlated (r=0.72, P<0.001). Using the SPHERE case criteria, prolonged fatigue (37% [40/109]) and psychological
distress 31% (34/109) were common in women treated for breast cancer. However, those
who reported fatigue were much more likely to also report psychological symptoms (22/40
vs. 12/69, χ2=16.7: degrees of freedom (df)=1; P<0.001) and the levels of fatigue on the FACT-F were not significantly different between
those who reported `fatigue only' and those who reported `psychological distress only'
(18.8 vs. 17.8, P=0.79).Thus the recent emphasis on recording fatigue during and following treatments
for cancer needs to be accompanied by concurrent measurement of psychological symptoms.
Abbreviations:
SPHERE=Somatic and Psychological Health REport (), FACT-F=Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-Fatigue (), DSM-IV=Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition ()Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Accepted:
March 30,
2004
Received in revised form:
March 29,
2004
Received:
December 4,
2003
Identification
Copyright
© 2004 Elsevier Ltd. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
