ArticleBMC psychology2024
Evaluating psychological distress in Chinese patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma planned for radiotherapy: a cross-sectional study using the distress thermometer.
Article in BMC psychology, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Psychosocial predictors of chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting among chemotherapy-naïve cancer patients: a prospective multicenter cohort study.Journal of cancer survivorship : research and practice · 2026Article
- Re-authoring the altered self: the impact of a three-phase narrative nursing intervention on body image and distress in oral squamous cell carcinoma.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
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5 authors.
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Abstract
objectiveWe aim to estimate the prevalence of baseline clinically significant distress in Chinese patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) before receiving the first radiotherapy and assess factors predictive of distress.
methodsOne hundred and sixty-eight patients were enrolled to complete a set of questionnaires including Distress Thermometer (DT) and Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS). Of these, 131 questionnaires were available for the final analysis. The accuracy of DT was validated using HADS as the gold standard, and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were employed to identify the optimal cutoff score of DT.
resultsDistress was reported in sixty-two patients (47%). Patients who were visited in the last week (p = 0.022) and those with medical-related occupations (p = 0.017) were less likely to suffer from psychological distress. Additionally, religious belief was negatively associated with both the DT and HADS-T scores, indicating that patients with religious beliefs were less likely to report high levels of distress (odds ratio (OR) for DT ≥ 4 = 0.291, p = 0.039; OR for HADS-T ≥ 15 = 0.316, p = 0.047). Factors such as age, gender, marital status, education and residency did not contribute to distress levels. DT was significantly correlated with HADS-T (Correlation coefficient (r) = 0.624, p < 0.001) and the best cutoff score of DT was 4 in screening distress.
conclusionsDT was a brief and effective tool to screen distress among HNSCC patients.
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