Trajectories of Depressed Mood and Anxiety During Chemotherapy for Breast Cancer.
Meagan Whisenant, Bob Wong, Sandra A Mitchell and 2 others
PMID 31805023WHAT IT FOUND
Most women reported mild depressed mood or anxiety during chemotherapy cycles 2 and 3.
A smaller group had moderate symptoms early in a cycle, and some stayed moderate. Nurses may need to assess mood and anxiety early.
Key findings
01Most women stayed in a consistently mild depressed mood or anxiety class during cycles 2 and 3.
02A small group had moderate depressed mood or anxiety, and some of these classes remained moderate over the first 14 days.
03During cycle 3, all women in the moderate depressed mood class and 83.3% in the moderate anxiety class had received Doxorubicin.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
This was an exploratory secondary analysis, so it was meant to generate hypotheses rather than test a primary outcome. The moderate symptom classes were small, which may have made it hard to detect real differences. Mood and anxiety were measured with single daily items, so the scores may not reflect clinically meaningful depression or anxiety. The analysis did not include history of psychological illness, coping, or comorbidities, which are important correlates of mood symptoms. The sample was mostly White and married, so the patterns may not apply to other groups. Class membership was predicted from probability models and treated as observed, so individual group assignment may be uncertain.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not treat the moderate trajectory classes as evidence of clinical depression or anxiety. The study used daily single-item severity ratings, and the authors said these ratings may not represent clinically meaningful levels.