Investigation on symptom clusters in patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma undergoing concurrent chemoradiation therapy
Shen Yi
Qiang Wanmin
Abstract：Objective:To investigate and analyze the prevalence and distribution of symptom clusters in patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma undergoing concurrent chemoradiotherapy(CCRT).Methods:A total of 103 nasopharyngeal carcinoma patients undergoing CCRT were surveyed with the general questionnaire and the Chinese version of the M.D Anderson Symptom Inventory(MDASI-H&N).Spearman correlation method was used to analyze the correlation of the symptoms.Principal component analysis(PCA) was used to extract symptom clusters.Results:Nasopharyngeal carcinoma patients undergoing CCRT had many symptoms,of which the most severe symptoms were the diaphagia,poor appetite,oral/pharyngeal mucus,skin pain/burn/rash,and heterorexia.PCA identified four symptom clusters,which were adverse radiotherapy reaction symptom clusters,emotion-pain symptom clusters,sleep disorder symptom clusters,and the digestive tract symptom clusters.The Cronbach's alpha coefficients of the four symptom clusters were 0.95,0.94,0.90 and 0.92,respectively.Conclusions:There were four symptom clusters in patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma undergoing CCRT.Recognition of these symptom clusters was useful for medical staff to assess and provide synthetical and flexible interventions according to the time and number of symptoms,and it could release the burden of symptoms and improve the life quality of patients.
Keywords：nasopgaryngeal cancerradiotherapychemotherapysymptom clustercharacteristictoxic side effect
Publication Date：2017-01-01
Online Publishing Date：2025-08-15(First online date of this platform, not the publication date of the document)
Pages：5( 3962-3966 )