Anxiety and depression in recurrent gastric cancer: Their prevalence and independent risk factors analyses

Various anxiety and depression-related risk factors have been reported in cancer patients. However, little is known about the anxiety and depression-related risk factors in recurrent gastric cancer patients. Therefore, our aim was to investigate the prevalence and risk factors for anxiety and depression in recurrent gastric cancer patients. Totally 82 recurrent gastric cancer patients were consecutively recruited, and their clinical features were collected from hospital's electronic medical records. Besides, 80 newly diagnosed gastric cancer patients and 80 healthy controls were enrolled. Their anxiety and depression status was assessed using Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS). The HADS-anxiety score (9.1 ± 3.4, 7.2 ± 3.0, 4.8 ± 2.7, respectively) and the percentage of anxiety patients (52.4%, 33.8%, 11.3%, respectively) were increased in recurrent gastric cancer patients compared to newly diagnosed gastric cancer patients and healthy controls; Also, the HADS-depression score (7.9 ± 3.1, 6.7 ± 2.6, 4.1 ± 2.8, respectively) and the percentage of depression patients (41.5%, 25.0%, 8.8%, respectively) had similar trends. Forward stepwise multivariate logistic regression revealed that age ≥60 years, diabetes, tumor-node-metastasis (TNM) stage at diagnosis, shorter time to recurrence and distant metastasis at recurrence were independent risk factors for anxiety occurrence, whereas age ≥60 years, diabetes, tumor location at diagnosis (cardia vs gastric antrum) and shorter time to recurrence were independent risk factors for depression occurrence. The prevalence of anxiety and depression is such high, and their relevant risk factors include age ≥60 years, diabetes and shorter time to recurrence in recurrent gastric cancer patients.