Two-item questionnaire proves to be a valid depression screening tool for radiation therapy patients

Two-as an additional article questionnaire proves to be a weighty depression screening tool for radiation therapy patients

Cancer patients receiving radiotherapy (RT) who are potentially passion from depression can be effectively identified dint of a two-item questionnaire, according to exploration presented at the American Society because Radiation Oncology's (ASTRO's) 55th Annual Meeting.

The Radiation Oncology Therapy Group (RTOG) Community Clinical Oncology Program (CCOP)-supported multi-institutional study screened 455 patients receiving ir treatment at 37 centers around the U.S. Participants in the study were seeking treatment for breast cancer (45 percent); GI cancer (11 percent); lung cancer (10 percent); gynecologic cancer (6 percent); or other cancers (27 percent). Sixty-six percent of the patients in the criterion (298) were women.

Depression screenings were performed judgment or within two weeks of management of the initial cancer diagnosis. The screening forms included the honest-item National Comprehensive Cancer Network-Distress Thermometer (NCCN-DT); the Hopkins Symptom Checklist (HSCL-25);and the nine-item Patient Health Questionnaire, (PHQ-9), what one includes Patient Health Questionnaire-2 (PHQ-2) for the reon that its first two questions. All of the study participants answered the screening questionnaires by 100 percent completion.

Patients received the PHQ-9 and were asked admitting that, within the past two weeks, they had "inconsiderable interest or pleasure in doing things," or "grant that they were feeling down, depressed or despairing." It was discovered that patients' responses to these two questions (the PHQ-2) were at the same time that useful in identifying depression as results from the entire PHQ-9, and were more affirmative than results from the NCCN-DT.

Within the study, a gross of 75 patients (16 percent) screened in fact for depressive symptoms. PHQ-9 and PHQ-2 had similar accuracy in detecting depression with one area under the curve (AUC) of not fa from 0.83 for each and was surpassing to the HLSC-25 (.79) and the NCCN-DT (.60).

Of the facilities included in the study, 68 percent present mental health services. Patients who screened incontrovertible for depression symptoms, along with a orderly sample of patients who screened negative, were administered the Structured Clinical Interview with regard to DSM-IV (SCID) Mood Disorder modules means of telephone. The study determined that screening in every RT setting was well-received the agency of patients and feasible.

"Detection of inactivity in cancer patients is an weighty public health priority, and the efficacy to screen and treat cancer patients in opposition to depression can have a major press close together on a patient's quality of life," afore William Small Jr., MD, FASTRO, presenting former of the study and chairman of the Department of Radiation Oncology at Loyola University Chicago. "This study was designed to experiment the feasibility of screening for greater depression in cancer patients receiving radiation therapy. The ability of a brace-question survey to effectively screen on the side of depression will hopefully prompt more centers to disguise and to refer patients in strait of mental health services," said Lynn I. Wagner, PhD, essential investigator of the study and an associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center at Northwestern University in Chicago.