Varying severities of symptoms underline the relevance of personalized follow-up care in breast cancer survivors: latent class cluster analyses in a cross-sectional cohort
Purpose Insights into the severity of co-existing symptoms can help in identifying breast cancer survivors in need of symptom management. We aimed to identify subgroups of breast cancer survivors based on patterns of symptom severity, and characteristics associated with these subgroups. Methods We s...
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Published in | Supportive care in cancer Vol. 30; no. 10; pp. 7873 - 7883 |
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Main Authors | , , , , , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
Berlin/Heidelberg
Springer Berlin Heidelberg
01.10.2022
Springer Springer Nature B.V |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | Purpose
Insights into the severity of co-existing symptoms can help in identifying breast cancer survivors in need of symptom management. We aimed to identify subgroups of breast cancer survivors based on patterns of symptom severity, and characteristics associated with these subgroups.
Methods
We selected surgically treated stage I–III breast cancer survivors 1–5 years post-diagnosis from the Netherlands Cancer Registry (
N
= 876). We assessed experienced severity of
fatigue
,
nausea
,
pain
,
dyspnea
,
insomnia
,
appetite
,
constipation
,
diarrhea
, and
emotional
and
cognitive symptoms
through the EORTC-QLQ-C30 Quality of Life Questionnaire on a scale of 0–100. We determined subgroups of survivors using latent class cluster analyses (LCA) based on severity of co-existing symptoms and compared their mean severity to the age-matched female reference population to interpret clinical relevance. We assessed subgroup characteristics by multinomial logistic regression analyses.
Results
From 404 respondents (46%), three subgroups of survivors with distinct symptom severity were identified:
low severity
(
n
= 116, 28.7%),
intermediate severity
(
n
= 224, 55.4%), and
high severity
(
n
= 59, 14.6%). The
low
subgroup reported lower symptom severity than the general population; the
intermediate
subgroup reported a similar symptom severity, although scores for
fatigue
,
insomnia
, and
cognitive symptoms
were worse (small-medium clinical relevance). The
high
subgroup had worse symptom severity (medium-large clinical relevance). Compared to the
intermediate
subgroup, one (RRR: 2.75; CI: 1.22–6.19;
p
= 0.015) or more (RRR: 9.19; CI: 3.70–22.8;
p
= < 0.001) comorbidities were significantly associated with the
high
subgroup. We found no associated treatment characteristics.
Conclusion
We identified distinct subgroups of breast cancer survivors based on symptom severity, underlining the relevance of further exploring personalized follow-up strategies. |
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Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 |
ISSN: | 0941-4355 1433-7339 |
DOI: | 10.1007/s00520-022-07229-6 |