No abstract

Screening for emotional distress is becoming increasingly common in cancer care. This systematic review examines the psychometric properties of the existing tools used to screen patients for emotional distress, with the goal of encouraging screening programs to use standardized tools that have strong psychometrics. Systematic searches of MEDLINE and PsycINFO databases for English-language studies in cancer patients were performed using a uniform set of key words (eg, depression, anxiety, screening, validation, and scale), and the retrieved studies were independently evaluated by two reviewers. Evaluation criteria included the number of validation studies, the number of participants, generalizability, reliability, the quality of the criterion measure, sensitivity, and specificity. The literature search yielded 106 validation studies that described a total of 33 screening measures. Many generic and cancer-specific scales satisfied a fairly high threshold of quality in terms of their psychometric properties and generalizability. Among the ultrashort measures (ie, those containing one to four items), the Combined Depression Questions performed best in patients receiving palliative care. Among the short measures (ie, those containing five to 20 items), the Center for Epidemiologic Studies–Depression Scale and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale demonstrated adequate psychometric properties. Among the long measures (ie, those containing 21–50 items), the Beck Depression Inventory and the General Health Questionaire–28 met all evaluation criteria. The PsychoSocial Screen for Cancer, the Questionnaire on Stress in Cancer Patients–Revised, and the Rotterdam Symptom Checklist are long measures that can also be recommended for routine screening. In addition, other measures may be considered for specific indications or disease types. Some measures, particularly newly developed cancer-specific scales, require further validation against structured clinical interviews (the criterion standard for validation measures) before they can be recommended.

The HADS anxiety subscale performed worse than the total and the depression subscales for both indicators. Diagnostic accuracy varied widely by threshold but was consistently superior for depression screening than for screening of any mental disorder.

No abstract

Background There is little knowledge as to whether the chronicity of a disease affects patientsÕ desire for participation.

Genetic testing prompted an increase in general and cancer-specific distress for BRCA1/2+ women, which remitted by 1 year after result receipt.

Decision aids in North American breast cancer outpatients have been shown to assist with treatment decision making and reduce decisional conflict. To date, appropriate delivery formats to effectively increase patient participation in newly diagnosed breast cancer inpatients have not been investigated in the context of German health care provision. The impact of a decision aid intervention was studied in patients (n ¼ 111) with a strong suspicion of breast cancer in a randomised controlled trial. The primary outcome variable was decisional conflict. Participants were followed up 1 week post-intervention with a retention rate of 92%. Analyses revealed that the intervention group felt better informed (Z p 2 ¼ 0.06) but did not experience an overall reduction in decisional conflict as compared with the control group. The intervention had no effect on uptake rates of treatment options, length of consultation with the surgeon, time point of treatment decision making, perceived involvement in decision making, neither decision related nor general patient satisfaction. Patients who received the decision aid intervention experienced a small benefit with regards to how informed they felt about advantages and disadvantages of relevant treatment options. Results are discussed in terms of contextual factors and individual differences as moderators of treatment decision aid effectiveness.

Background:We hypothesised that patients with advanced disease or a cancer type that has a poor prognosis may be more likely to report anxiety and depressive symptoms after diagnosis; younger age and female gender may moderate these effects.Methods:Patients (n=3850) were consecutively assessed with PSSCAN, a standardised, validated tool, at two large cancer centres between 2004 and 2009.Results:Female patients reported more anxiety and depressive symptoms (P=0.003 to P<0.001) compared with men and a healthy comparison group. Older age was associated with fewer anxiety (P=0.033 to P<0.001) and fewer depressive symptoms (P<0.001), but this was not true for lung cancer. Presence of metastases was associated with more anxiety symptoms in patients with gastrointestinal (P=0.044; R2Δ=0.001), lung (P=0.011; R2Δ=0.016), and prostate (P=0.032; R2Δ=0.008) cancer, but this was not true for breast cancer. Furthermore, early disease stage was associated with fewer depressive symptoms among older prostate cancer patients (P=0.021; R2Δ=0.008). Men with early lung cancer reported fewer anxiety (P=0.020; R2Δ=0.013) and depressive (P=0.017; R2Δ=0.016) symptoms than men with advanced disease or women.Conclusion:As hypothesised, disease stage was directly associated with emotional distress, except for patients with breast cancer. Furthermore, age and gender moderated some of these effects.