Symptom clusters in patients with prostate cancer: A literature review

This paper presents a review of the literature reporting empirically determined symptom clusters in prostate cancer patients. The authors conducted a literature search on symptom clusters in prostate cancer patients using EMBASE, MEDLINE, and CINAHL. Studies examining the presence of predetermined c...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of pain management Vol. 5; no. 4; p. 303
Main Authors Thavarajah, Nemica, Chen, Emily, Bedard, Gillian, Lauzon, Natalie, Zhou, Michelle, Chu, Dominic, Chow, Edward
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Hauppauge Nova Science Publishers, Inc 01.10.2012
Subjects
Literature reviews
Men
Prostate cancer
Radiation therapy
Studies
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Summary:This paper presents a review of the literature reporting empirically determined symptom clusters in prostate cancer patients. The authors conducted a literature search on symptom clusters in prostate cancer patients using EMBASE, MEDLINE, and CINAHL. Studies examining the presence of predetermined clusters were excluded. Two relevant studies published in 2008 were identified. Both studies were longitudinal in nature and utilized cluster analysis to derive symptom clusters, while the first study, conducted by Maliski et al, used this in combination with three other statistical methods. Several clusters were identified in each study ranging from two to six symptoms per cluster. Maliski et al observed a combination of psychosocial and physical symptoms in patients receiving different types of prostate cancer treatments while the second study, conducted by Capp et al solely analyzed radiation-induced rectal symptoms across a time trajectory. Pain and bowel dysfunction were two symptoms commonly observed in both studies despite the lack of similar symptom clusters derived between the two studies.
ISSN:1939-5914