FACTORS RELATED TO CANCER-RELATED FATIGUE IN ADVANCED GASTRIC CANCER PATIENTS ONE MONTH AFTER GASTRECTOMY IN WENZHOU, CHINA

Abstract

Cancer-related fatigue (CRF) is the most common and painful symptom in cancer patients. The aim of this study was to describe CRF and to determine the relationships between sleep disturbance, nutritional risk, anxiety, and social support with CRF among advanced gastric cancer patients one month after gastrectomy in Wenzhou, China. Simple random technique was applied to recruit 111 participants from the inpatient and outpatient department of gastrointestinal surgery, the First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University in Wenzhou, China. Research instruments included Demographic questionnaire, Athens Insomnia Scale (AIS), the Patient-Generated Subjective Global Assessment (PG-SGA), Zung Self-Rating Anxiety Scale (SAS), Social Support Rating Scale (SSRS) and Brief Fatigue Inventory (BFI). The scales all have good reliability that the Cronbach’s coefficient alpha was .82, .80, .81, .81, and .94 respectively. Data was analyzed by descriptive statistics and Pearson correlation.

The results of this study showed that the mean score of CRF was 2.71 (SD = 1.50) out of 10. The Pearson correlation analysis revealed the sleep disturbance, nutritional risk, and anxiety were positively relationship with CRF (r = .37, p < .001), (r = .35, p < .001), (r = .57, p < .001) respectively and social support was negatively relationship with CRF (r = -.40, p < .001) among advanced gastric cancer patients one month after gastrectomy in Wenzhou, China.

The findings can provide a theoretical basis for developing nursing intervention to improve sleep quality, enhance nutrition, reduce anxiety and provide more social support to enable advanced gastric cancer patients after gastrectomy to reduce cancer-related fatigue in order to continue further treatment, and to improve their quality of life.

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