Health-related quality of life in head and neck cancer survivors: impact of pretreatment depressive symptoms.

Howren MB, Christensen AJ, Karnell LH, Funk GF. Health-related quality of life in head and neck cancer survivors: impact of pretreatment depressive symptoms. Health psychology : official journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association. 2010 Jan 1; 29(1):65-71.

Related HSR&D Project(s)

• IIR 04-201 – Patient and Provider Attitudes in the Healthcare Context

Dimensions for VA is a web-based tool available to VA staff that enables detailed searches of published research and research projects.

If you have VA-Intranet access, click here for more information vaww.hsrd.research.va.gov/dimensions/

VA staff not currently on the VA network can access Dimensions by registering for an account using their VA email address.    Search Dimensions for VA for this citation
* Don't have VA-internal network access or a VA email address? Try searching the free-to-the-public version of Dimensions

Search for Abstract from PubMed

---

Abstract:

OBJECTIVE: Symptoms of depression are common in those with cancer. The authors investigated whether depressive symptoms assessed before the initiation of cancer treatment predicted diminished health-related quality of life (HRQOL) at follow-up. DESIGN: As part of a large, prospective study of oncologic outcomes, 306 patients with head and neck cancer (HNC) were assessed on several clinical and psychosocial characteristics during a pretreatment clinic visit and then at 3- and 12-month follow-up appointments. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Depressive symptomatology was assessed with the Beck Depression Inventory and HNC-specific HRQOL (main outcome measure) was assessed with the Head and Neck Cancer Inventory. RESULTS: Controlling for age, gender, marital status, cancer site, stage of disease, alcohol and tobacco use, comorbidity status, and pretreatment HRQOL, simultaneous multiple regression analyses revealed that depressive symptoms present at study enrollment, before the initiation of cancer treatment, significantly predicted lower HRQOL at 3- and 12-month follow-up assessments across the 4 HNC-specific domains of speech, eating, aesthetics, and social disruption (all ps < or = .01). CONCLUSION: Results suggest that depressive symptomatology present near the time of diagnosis can have a significant, deleterious impact on HRQOL over time in HNC survivors. Thus, it may be useful to assess depression at diagnosis to identify individuals at greater risk for poor HRQOL outcomes.