“Feelings are facts”: Illness perceptions in patients with lung cancer

Abstract

Given the high degree of psychosocial problems in patients with lung cancer, quality medical care would benefit from exploring and addressing and providing potential solutions for these problems. Patients with recently diagnosed non-small-cell lung cancer filled out a questionnaire that assessed illness perceptions and made a drawing of how they perceived their diseased lungs look. They also participated in an interview about the impact of lung cancer in their lives. Scores on the Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire indicated that patients score low on 'concern', 'emotional response' and 'timeline', indicating they hope to be cured from lung cancer. Patients drew the tumor larger than it is on the chest radiograph. The drawings are moderately accurate representations of the patients' lungs. In the interviews patients often expressed their hopes of being cured and how thinking positively would help. Patients who made a more accurate drawing of their lungs had less optimistic views about their prognosis. These views are more in line with the prognosis their physician would give them. However, few patients made an accurate drawing. This study contributes to a better insight into what patients believe and feel about their disease. Suggestions for taking patient perceptions into account are provided.

Impact of symptom clusters on quality of life outcomes in patients from japan with advanced nonsmall cell lung cancers

“…[44] Further, patients with lung cancer are reported to harbor hopes of being cured. [45] For the above reasons, for patients with the most advanced stages of NSCLCs like in this study, suffering pain may arouse doubts about the effectiveness of the medical care for their lung cancer, and reduce the efficacy of the medical care due to a perceived mismatch between their expectations and their physical condition, resulting in the passive-sounding report of the pain. Thus, the pain cluster identified in this study may be unique to the Japanese patients with advanced NSCLCs under standard chemotherapy.…”

Using drawings to explore patients’ perceptions of their illness: a scoping review

“…This was also reflected in several other illnesses, where analyses of drawings created by participants highlighted the unique ways in which the illnesses or conditions were comprehended and experienced, for example, heart disease,52 menopause,51 postnatal depression53 and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection 40,41. This additional insight emerging through an analysis of patient-created drawings was also observed in studies involving patients with lung cancer,25 severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease,57 and Ebola infection 35…”

“…It would be useful to specify the number and background of raters. Five studies reported the kappa value for inter-observer reliability 25,28,57,59,60. However, kappa statistics can only be useful if the raters are looking at objective elements such as size and quantity of the contents in the drawing.…”

“…In some studies with a quantitative component, the authors highlighted that the validity and generalizability of the findings were uncertain as there may have been insufficient power to detect a meaningful association between variables due to restrictions in sample size 24,25,28. However, it is important to recognize that power is not relevant when discussing the associations between quantitative and qualitative components.…”

Psychosocial Response and Symptom Burden for Male Smokers with Lung Cancer

“…Studies have given good general evidence that depression is a significant problem in lung cancer patients (Lynch et al, 2010;Sharp et al, 2013). And there have been many suggestions of a role for psychological response in the outcome of cancer (Watson et al, 2005;Messina et al, 2010;Knobf, 2011;Hoogerwerf et al, 2012). Despite a large number of patients with lung cancer who receive treatment, there is little published data concerning the psychological responses in the male smokers with lung cancer and its influence on the symptom burden.…”