Mood Disorder in Cancer Patients Undergoing Radiotherapy During the COVID-19 Outbreak

Frontiers in Psychology

article

Valerio Nardone¹  Maria Angela Polifrone²  Michele Caraglia³  Salvatore Cappabianca³  Cesare Guida¹  Alfonso Reginelli³  Claudia Vinciguerra⁴  Pierpaolo Correale²  Maria Grazia Calvanese¹  Sara Falivene¹  Angelo Sangiovanni³  Roberta Grassi³  Angela Di Biase¹ 

[1] Unit of Radiation Oncology, Ospedale del Mare;Unit of Medical Oncology, Grand Metropolitan Hospital “Bianchi Melacrino Morelli;Department of Precision Medicine, University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli;Unit of Neurology, University Hospital of Salerno

关键词: mood disorders;    COVID-19;    radiotherapy;    cancer;    anxiety;    depression;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2021.568839

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Introduction: Novel coronavirus (COVID-19) is having a devastating psychological impact on patients, especially patients with cancer. This work aims to evaluate mood disorders of cancer patients undergoing radiation therapy during COVID-19 in comparison with cancer patients who underwent radiation therapy in 2019. Materials and Methods: We included all the patients undergoing radiation therapy at our department in two-time points (once a week for a month in May 2019) and during the COVID-19 outbreak (in April 2020). All the patients were asked to fulfill a validated questionnaire (STAI-Y1, State trait anxiety inventory scale), the Symptom Distress thermometer (SDT) (from 0 to 10 score), and the Beck Depression Inventory v.2 (BDI-2). We took into account the COVID-19 outbreak and also sex, age, week of radiation treatment, and disease. Results: We included 458 patients (220 males and 238 females), with a median age of 64 years. STAI-Y1 median score was 40 (mean 41,3, range 19–79), whereas the median score of SDT was five and BDI-2 median score was 11. STAI-Y1, SDT, and BDI-2 were significantly correlated with the COVID-19 outbreak ( p < 0,001 for all the tests), sex ( p : 0,016 for STAI-Y1, p < 0.001 for SDT, p :0.013 for BDI-2), week of treatment ( p : 0.012 for STAI-Y1 and p : 0.031 for SDT), and disease ( p :0.015 for STAI-Y1, p < 0.001 for SDT and p :0.020 for BDI-2). Conclusions: The prevalence of mood disorders in patients undergoing radiation therapy is higher than expected and even higher during the COVID-19 outbreak. These measurements could be useful as a baseline to start medical humanities programs to decrease these scores.

【 授权许可】

CC BY