Annals of Oncology Advance Access originally published online on October 14, 2005
Annals of Oncology 2005 16(12):1949-1955; doi:10.1093/annonc/mdi407
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
© 2005 European Society for Medical Oncology
A comparison between long-term survivors of Hodgkin's disease and their siblings on fatigue level and factors predicting for increased fatigue
1 Department of Radiation Oncology, Brigham and Women's Hospital; Departments of 2 Biostatistics and Computational Biology, and 3 Pediatric Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, USA
* Correspondence to: Dr A. Ng, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, 75 Francis Street, ASB1-L2, 02115 Boston, MA, USA. Tel.: 1-617-732-6310. E-mail: ang{at}lroc.harvard.edu
Purpose: To compare the level of fatigue in survivors of Hodgkin's disease and their siblings, and to explore factors associated with increased fatigue.
Methods: Survivors of Hodgkin's disease 5 years or more from diagnosis and their siblings completed a questionnaire study. Fatigue level was measured using the Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy-Fatigue (FACIT-F) instrument, with lower scores reflecting increased fatigue. Multiple regression models were used to identify factors associated with fatigue level in the two populations.
Results: Five hundred and eleven survivors (median age 44 years; range 16–82) and 224 siblings (median age 44 years; range 16–79) returned the completed questionnaire. The response rates were 61% and 58%, respectively. Compared with siblings, survivors were significantly more likely to report the presence of cardiac disease (26% versus 16%; P = 0.001) and hypothyroidism (65% versus 3%; P <0.001), and had a significantly lower mean FACIT-F score (40.7 and 42.2; P = 0.05). On multivariable analysis, factors significantly associated with increased fatigue in survivors were reports of cardiac disease (P <0.001), psychiatric condition (P <0.001), history of tobacco use (P = 0.004) and low exercise frequency (P = 0.03). For siblings, the only independent factor associated with increased fatigue was low exercise frequency (P = 0.03).
Conclusions: Survivors of Hodgkin's disease were more fatigued than their siblings. The difference was modest but statistically significant. The significant association between fatigue and cardiac disease suggests the importance of screening for underlying cardiac dysfunction in survivors with symptoms of fatigue. The association between fatigue and smoking history may be due to exacerbation of late medical complications of Hodgkin's disease by tobacco use.
Key words: cancer survivors, fatigue, Hodgkin's disease, late effects
CiteULike 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us What's this?
This article has been cited by other articles:
|
|
 |
|
  M. F.M. Gielissen, S. Verhagen, F. Witjes, and G. Bleijenberg Effects of Cognitive Behavior Therapy in Severely Fatigued Disease-Free Cancer Patients Compared With Patients Waiting for Cognitive Behavior Therapy: A Randomized Controlled Trial J. Clin. Oncol., October 20, 2006; 24(30): 4882 - 4887. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|