Symptom Clusters in Elderly Cancer Patients

描述(申请人提供)：癌症和治疗相关症状很少孤立出现，并给患者带来痛苦，因此症状治疗必须开始解决多种症状的共存问题。癌症患者的症状聚集性是一个新的研究领域，到目前为止，对老年癌症患者的症状聚集性经验知之甚少。这项研究是对972名65岁或以上的新近诊断为乳腺癌、结直肠癌、肺癌或前列腺癌的人进行的二次数据分析。这项研究的目的是确定：1)疼痛、疲倦和失眠共同出现的流行率；2)这三种症状共同出现的条件；3)哪些症状集中在一起；4)这些症状群在癌症确诊后6、12、24和52周的稳定性；以及5)症状群如何基于癌症部位或疾病阶段(早期和晚期)而不同。本研究所获得的知识将有助于阐明老年癌症患者在癌症事件诊断后第一年的症状丛集经历，为制定多种症状并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.