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Identifying at risk populations amongst breast cancer survivors and their common symptoms and concerns

PURPOSE: The survival rate amongst breast cancer survivors (BCS) have been increasing, with a 5-year survival rate of almost 90%. These women face many quality of life (QOL) issues either due to either cancer itself or the complex treatment regimen. Our retrospective analysis aims to identify at ris...

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Autores principales: Roy, Pooja, Kovalenko, Iuliia, Gomez, Janet Chan, Lu, Kit, Rudge, Beth, Wert, Yijin, Torp, Lisa
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10251599/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37291544
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12905-023-02458-1
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author Roy, Pooja
Kovalenko, Iuliia
Gomez, Janet Chan
Lu, Kit
Rudge, Beth
Wert, Yijin
Torp, Lisa
author_facet Roy, Pooja
Kovalenko, Iuliia
Gomez, Janet Chan
Lu, Kit
Rudge, Beth
Wert, Yijin
Torp, Lisa
author_sort Roy, Pooja
collection PubMed
description PURPOSE: The survival rate amongst breast cancer survivors (BCS) have been increasing, with a 5-year survival rate of almost 90%. These women face many quality of life (QOL) issues either due to either cancer itself or the complex treatment regimen. Our retrospective analysis aims to identify at risk populations among the BCS and their most common concerns. METHODS: This is a single-institution, retrospective, descriptive analysis of patients who were seen at our Breast Cancer Survivorship Program from October 2016 to May 2021. Patients completed a comprehensive survey which assessed self-reported symptoms, their concerns and degree of worry and recovery to baseline. The descriptive analysis on the patient characteristics included age, cancer stage and treatment type. The bivariate analysis included the relationship between the patient characteristics and their outcomes. Analysis of group differences was completed with Chi-square test. When the expected frequencies were five or less, Fisher exact test was used. Logistic regression models were developed to identify significant predictors for outcomes. RESULTS: 902 patients (age 26–94; median 64) were evaluated. Majority of women had stage 1 breast cancer. The most common self-reported concerns affecting the patients were fatigue (34%), insomnia (33%), hot flashes (26%), night sweats (23%), pain (22%), trouble concentrating (19%), and neuropathy (21%). Though 13% of BCS felt isolated at least 50% of their time, the majority of patients (91%) reported having a positive outlook and felt that they have a sense of purpose (89%). Younger patients were more likely to worry about their cancer more than 50% of the time (p < 0.0001). Patients that were less likely to return back to at least 50% of their pre-treatment baseline were younger (age ≤ 45) (p = 0.0280), had higher stage breast cancer (Stage 2–4) (p = 0.0061), and had chemotherapy either alone or as part of their multi-modality treatment (p < 0.0001). CONCLUSION: According to our study, younger patients, those with higher stage breast cancer and survivors who had chemotherapy may experience significant QOL issues. Fortunately, majority of BCS report a positive and optimistic outlook post treatment. Identifying common concerns after treatments and vulnerable populations are especially important to deliver quality care and to optimize interventions. IMPLICATIONS FOR CANCER SURVIVORS: Our study identified the most common self-reported concerns affecting BCS. In addition, our results suggest that younger patients, patients with higher stage breast cancer and survivors who had chemotherapy were more likely to have QOL issues. Despite this, our study showed, the majority of BCS reported positive outlooks and emotions.
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spelling pubmed-102515992023-06-10 Identifying at risk populations amongst breast cancer survivors and their common symptoms and concerns Roy, Pooja Kovalenko, Iuliia Gomez, Janet Chan Lu, Kit Rudge, Beth Wert, Yijin Torp, Lisa BMC Womens Health Research PURPOSE: The survival rate amongst breast cancer survivors (BCS) have been increasing, with a 5-year survival rate of almost 90%. These women face many quality of life (QOL) issues either due to either cancer itself or the complex treatment regimen. Our retrospective analysis aims to identify at risk populations among the BCS and their most common concerns. METHODS: This is a single-institution, retrospective, descriptive analysis of patients who were seen at our Breast Cancer Survivorship Program from October 2016 to May 2021. Patients completed a comprehensive survey which assessed self-reported symptoms, their concerns and degree of worry and recovery to baseline. The descriptive analysis on the patient characteristics included age, cancer stage and treatment type. The bivariate analysis included the relationship between the patient characteristics and their outcomes. Analysis of group differences was completed with Chi-square test. When the expected frequencies were five or less, Fisher exact test was used. Logistic regression models were developed to identify significant predictors for outcomes. RESULTS: 902 patients (age 26–94; median 64) were evaluated. Majority of women had stage 1 breast cancer. The most common self-reported concerns affecting the patients were fatigue (34%), insomnia (33%), hot flashes (26%), night sweats (23%), pain (22%), trouble concentrating (19%), and neuropathy (21%). Though 13% of BCS felt isolated at least 50% of their time, the majority of patients (91%) reported having a positive outlook and felt that they have a sense of purpose (89%). Younger patients were more likely to worry about their cancer more than 50% of the time (p < 0.0001). Patients that were less likely to return back to at least 50% of their pre-treatment baseline were younger (age ≤ 45) (p = 0.0280), had higher stage breast cancer (Stage 2–4) (p = 0.0061), and had chemotherapy either alone or as part of their multi-modality treatment (p < 0.0001). CONCLUSION: According to our study, younger patients, those with higher stage breast cancer and survivors who had chemotherapy may experience significant QOL issues. Fortunately, majority of BCS report a positive and optimistic outlook post treatment. Identifying common concerns after treatments and vulnerable populations are especially important to deliver quality care and to optimize interventions. IMPLICATIONS FOR CANCER SURVIVORS: Our study identified the most common self-reported concerns affecting BCS. In addition, our results suggest that younger patients, patients with higher stage breast cancer and survivors who had chemotherapy were more likely to have QOL issues. Despite this, our study showed, the majority of BCS reported positive outlooks and emotions. BioMed Central 2023-06-08 /pmc/articles/PMC10251599/ /pubmed/37291544 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12905-023-02458-1 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Roy, Pooja
Kovalenko, Iuliia
Gomez, Janet Chan
Lu, Kit
Rudge, Beth
Wert, Yijin
Torp, Lisa
Identifying at risk populations amongst breast cancer survivors and their common symptoms and concerns
title Identifying at risk populations amongst breast cancer survivors and their common symptoms and concerns
title_full Identifying at risk populations amongst breast cancer survivors and their common symptoms and concerns
title_fullStr Identifying at risk populations amongst breast cancer survivors and their common symptoms and concerns
title_full_unstemmed Identifying at risk populations amongst breast cancer survivors and their common symptoms and concerns
title_short Identifying at risk populations amongst breast cancer survivors and their common symptoms and concerns
title_sort identifying at risk populations amongst breast cancer survivors and their common symptoms and concerns
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10251599/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37291544
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12905-023-02458-1
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