Cancer Related Fatigue and Quality of Life in Patients with Advanced Prostate Cancer Undergoing Chemotherapy

Abstract

Cancer related fatigue (CRF) is a common and debilitating symptom that can influence quality of life (QoL) in cancer patients. The increase in survival times stresses for a better understanding of how CRF affects patients' QoL. This was a cross-sectional descriptive study with 148 randomly recruited prostate cancer patients aiming to explore CRF and its impact on QoL. Assessments included the Cancer Fatigue Scale, EORTC QLQ-C30, and EORTC QLQ-PR25. Additionally, 15 in-depth structured interviews were performed. Quantitative data were analyzed with simple and multiple regression analysis and independent samples t-test. Qualitative data were analyzed with the use of thematic content analysis. The 66.9% of the patients experienced CRF with higher levels being recorded for the affective subscale. Statistically significant differences were found between the patients reporting CRF and lower levels of QoL (mean = 49.1) and those that did not report fatigue and had higher levels of QoL (mean = 72.1). The interviews emphasized CRF's profound impact on the patients' lives that was reflected on the following themes: “dependency on others,” “loss of power over decision making,” and “daily living disruption.” Cancer related fatigue is a significant problem for patients with advanced prostate cancer and one that affects their QoL in various ways.

Quality of Life Assessment in Cancer Patients of Regional Centre of Hyderabad City

“…The maximum symptoms experienced by patients were found to be fatigue (48.6±1.66), followed by pain (48.06±1.95), sleep (46.13±2.82) and loss of appetite (45.24±2.54) as represented in Figure 2e. Our results were in concordance with the study conducted by Kawaguchi et al, 2012and Charalambous et al, 2016(Kawaguchi et al, 2012Charalambous et al, 2016).…”

The association between having assistive devices and activities of daily living ability and health‐related quality of life: An exploratory cross‐sectional study among people with advanced cancer

“…The association between high levels of pain or fatigue and low HRQoL also proved to be in line with previous studies (Johansson et al, ; Morello et al, ). A cross‐sectional study on patients with advanced prostate cancer (Charalambous & Kouta, ) found that cancer‐related fatigue affects HRQoL in various ways, such as increased dependency on others, loss of power over decision‐making and daily living disruption. Another study on people with head and neck cancer (Oliveira et al, ) found that the severity of pain is statistically related to advanced stages of cancer and that it directly affects HRQoL.…”

Investigation of the relationship among fatigue, self-efficacy and quality of life during chemotherapy in patients with breast, lung or gastrointestinal cancer

“…Cancer‐ and treatment‐related fatigues continue to be the most debilitating symptoms in patients with cancer (Charalambous & Kouta, ; Erturk et al., ; Mulders, Vingerhoets, & Breed, ; Williams et al., ) . The diagnosis and self‐care beliefs have been found to influence social life and work ability (Bains et al., ).…”

“…Almost all patients with cancer undergoing chemotherapy and radiotherapy experience very severe fatigue (Charalambous & Kouta, 2016;Erturk, Yildirim, Kilic, Ozer, & Aykar, 2015; Muszalik, Kołucka-Pluta, Kędziora-Kornatowska, & Robaczewska, 2016;Polanski, Jankowska-Polanska, Rosinczuk, Chabowski, & Szymanska-Chabowska, 2016;Williams, Bohac, Hunter, & Cella, 2016). Cancer treatment modalities and emotional problems contribute to fatigue (Blomberg et al, 2016;Johannson et al, 2018;Kim, Hickok, & Morrow, 2006;Sato & Sumi, 2015).…”