Characteristics of Cancer-Related Fatigue and an Efficient Model to Identify Patients with Gynecological Cancer Seeking Fatigue-Related Management

• Published in: Cancers Vol. 15; no. 7; p. 2181
• Main Authors: Wang, Ying-Wen, Ou, Yu-Che, Lin, Hao, Huang, Kun-Siang, Fu, Hung-Chun, Wu, Chen-Hsuan, Chen, Ying-Yi, Huang, Szu-Wei, Tu, Hung-Pin, Tsai, Ching-Chou
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 06.04.2023; MDPI
• Subjects: Cancer therapies; Care and treatment; Cervical cancer; Clinical medicine; Complications and side effects; Cross-sectional studies; Disease; Endometrial cancer; Endometrium; Fatigue; Generalized linear models; Genital cancer; Gynecology; Hair loss; Management; Obstetrics; Oncology; Ovarian cancer; Patients; Prediction models; Quality of life; Questionnaires; Risk factors; Risk groups; Sleep; Taiwan; fatigue; ovarian cancer; endometrial cancer; cross-sectional study; cancer-related fatigue; quality of life; cervical cancer; gynecological cancer
• ISSN: 2072-6694; 2072-6694
• DOI: 10.3390/cancers15072181

Cancer-related fatigue (CRF) is the most common somatic discomfort in patients with gynecological cancers. CRF is often overlooked; however, it can impair the patients' quality of life considerably. This cross-sectional study aimed to identify the clinical characteristics of CRF in gynecological cancer patients. Questionnaires and the International Classification of Diseases 10th Revision (ICD-10) criteria were used to identify CRF. The enrolled patients were further categorized according to the amount of fatigue-related management received. Of the enrolled 190 patients, 40.0% had endometrial cancer, 28.9% had cervical cancer, and 31.1% had ovarian cancer. On the basis of the ICD-10 diagnostic criteria, 42.6% had non-cancer-related fatigue, 10% had CRF, and 51% had BFI-T questionnaire-based fatigue. Moreover, 77.9% of the study cohort had ever received fatigue-related management. Further analysis showed that patients with endometrial/cervical cancer, International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics stage >1, Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group performance status score ≥1, inadequate cancer treatment response, and receiving cancer treatment in the past week had a higher probability of receiving more fatigue-related management. The five-item predictive model developed from these factors may help physicians recognize patients seeking more fatigue-related management more efficiently. This is important as they may suffer from a more profound CRF.