Symptom Clusters in Elderly Cancer Patients

描述（由申请人提供）：癌症和治疗相关的症状很少单独发生，并引起患者痛苦，因此症状的治疗必须开始解决多种症状的共同出现。癌症患者的症状聚类是一个新的研究领域，迄今为止对老年癌症患者的症状聚类经验知之甚少。这项研究是对972名65岁及以上的新诊断为乳腺癌、结直肠癌、肺癌或前列腺癌的患者的二次数据分析。本研究的目的是确定：1)疼痛、疲劳和失眠共存的患病率；2)这三种症状同时出现的条件；3)哪些症状聚集在一起；4)在癌症诊断后6、12、24和52周时这些症状群的稳定性；5)症状聚类如何根据癌症部位或疾病阶段（早期与晚期）而有所不同。本研究所获得的知识将有助于阐明老年癌症患者在偶然诊断癌症后第一年的症状群经历，并为制定多重症状共存的老年癌症患者的症状管理策略提供基础。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Cancer and treatment related symptoms rarely occur in isolation and cause patients distress, thus treatment of symptoms must begin to address the co-occurrence of multiple symptoms. Symptom clustering in cancer patients is a new field of inquiry and to date little is known about the symptom cluster experience of elderly cancer patients. This study is a secondary data analysis of 972 persons aged 65 years or older and newly diagnosed with breast, colorectal, lung or prostate cancer. The purposes of this study are to determine: 1) the prevalence of the co-occurrence of pain, fatigue and insomnia; 2) the conditions under which this triad of symptoms co-occur; 3) which symptoms cluster together; 4) the stability of these symptom clusters at 6,12, 24, and 52 weeks following the incident cancer diagnosis; and 5) how symptom clustering may differ based upon site of cancer or stage of disease (early versus late). The knowledge gained from this study will help to illuminate the symptom cluster experiences of elderly cancer patients through the first year following an incident diagnosis of cancer and provide the foundation for developing symptom management strategies for elderly cancer patients who endure the co-occurrence of multiple symptoms.