What bothers lung cancer patients the most? A prospective, longitudinal electronic patient-reported outcomes study in advanced non-small cell lung cancer

▸ LeBlanc TW, Nickolich M, Rushing CN, et al. Support Care Cancer 2015. Published Online First.

In a longitudinal single-site symptom study in 2008, 97 patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer completed an electronic symptom assessment tool at up to four clinic visits. They had a mean time from the initial lung cancer diagnosis of 534 days and a median survival from study enrolment of 354 days. Their main concerns were difficulty with doing hard activity, household work, running as well as fatigue, pain, dyspnoea and insomnia. Over half of the patients reported moderate/severe fatigue and one-third reported dyspnoea, this remained reasonably constant over the clinic visits. Psychosocial symptoms and their prevalence were: anxiety (25%), worry (22%), helplessness (18%), depression (18%), worthlessness (14%) and hopelessness (10%). The number of moderate/severe symptoms increased as patients approached death; with just under half reporting moderate/severe fatigue when they had longer than 1 year to live and 84% in the past 3 months of life. This study shows that patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer have a substantial symptom burden, especially those relating to physical movement or functioning, which increase as they become closer to …