Depression in older breast cancer survivors

BMC Surgery

Research Article

Francesca Catalano¹  Antonio Biondi²  Francesco Basile²  Ernesto Vinci³  Marco Vacante⁴  Paola Frazzetto⁴  Emanuela Cataudella⁴  Giulia Malaguarnera⁵  Michele Malaguarnera⁵  Filippo Drago⁵ 

[1] Breast Unit, Department of Oncology, Cannizzaro Hospital Via Messina 829, 95125, Catania, Italy;Department of General Surgery, Section of General Surgery and Oncology, Vittorio Emanuele Hospital, Via Plebiscito 628 University of Catania, 95123, Catania, Italy;Department of Oncology, Ospedale di Enna, Italy;Department of Senescence, Urological and Neurological Sciences, Cannizzaro Hospital Via Messina 829, 95125, University of Catania, Italy;International PhD programme in Neuropharmacology, University of Catania, Italy;

关键词: Breast Cancer;    Cancer Survivor;    Breast Cancer Survivor;    Depression Symptom;    Breast Cancer Diagnosis;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2482-12-S1-S14

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundBreast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer among U.S. women .The 5-year survival rate for this tumour is nowadays 85%, and the 61% of these women are still alive at 15 years. When depression symptoms are present as a consequence of breast cancer treatments, they may interfere negatively with patients’ quality of life. The aim of this study was to examine the effects of breast cancer treatment on the quality of life and the impact of depression on the health-related life.MethodsWe enrolled 173 women aged 65-75 years with early stage breast cancer diagnosed over the last 10 years, initially recruited to participate in a study examining heath-related quality of life in the first 5 years after breast cancer diagnosis. Participants were divided into four groups: 1) 46 breast cancer survivors (aged 65-70); 2) 62 women diagnosed with breast cancer (aged 65-69); 3) 32 women with recurrent breast cancer after 10 years (aged 66-75); 4) 30 women in good health status (aged 60-70). The Geriatric Depression Scale was used as a routine part of a comprehensive geriatric assessment. Collection of data for the application of instruments, such as sociodemographic variables (age, educational level, social state) and clinical date (stage and time of the disease and treatment), was carried out by trained researcher assistants.ResultsOur results demonstrated the correlation between depression and previous cancer experiences. In fact, in patients with cancer experience, the grade of depression was significantly higher compared to healthy subjects. Furthermore, we demonstrated that the patients with recurrent breast cancer were severely depressed compared to other groups.ConclusionsA high percentage of participants were identified as having emotional and/or well being problems. Further investigations on the cause of depression problems cancer-related are needed.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Frazzetto et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2012. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.