Identification of Core Symptom Cluster in Patients With Digestive Cancer: A Network Analysis.
Ke Wang, Min Diao, Zhaoxia Yang and 2 others
PMID 37903303WHAT IT FOUND
Distress was the most common and most connected symptom in patients with digestive cancer, linked with sadness and numbness.
Poor appetite was the most severe. Higher stage and concurrent chemotherapy and radiotherapy were linked to worse overall symptoms.
Key findings
01Distress was the most common symptom, reported by 165 of 202 patients (81.7%).
02Poor appetite had the highest average severity score among the listed symptoms, 4.21 on the 0 to 10 scale.
03Patients receiving concurrent chemotherapy and radiotherapy had higher overall symptom severity than patients having surgery; the study cannot separate the effects of chemotherapy from radiotherapy.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
The patients were recruited by convenience sampling from one hospital in Shandong Province, so the findings may not apply elsewhere. Most participants were older men, so the results may not fit younger patients or women as well. The study looked at symptoms at one time point, so it cannot show which symptoms caused others. Some symptom network estimates were imprecise, and the stability of two centrality measures was poor, so the central symptom ranking should be read cautiously. Symptoms were rated for only the past 24 hours, so longer-term patterns may be missed.
Declared interests
The authors reported no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that treating distress will reduce other symptoms. This was a cross-sectional symptom survey with no intervention, and the authors state it cannot show cause and effect.