ESTRO 2024 - Abstract Book

S5733

RTT - Patient experience and quality of life

ESTRO 2024

3166

Digital Poster

To what extent do patients treated for cancer suffer from depression during radiation therapy?

Rim Trigui, Hajer Zelaiti, Wafa Mnejja, Wael Kaabia, Nejla Fourati, Jamel Daoud

Habib Bourguiba Hospital Faculty of Medicine University of Sfax, Radiotherapy Department, Sfax, Tunisia

Purpose/Objective:

Depression is a common comorbidity in the different phases of cancer management which can affect up to 25% of patients. Radiotherapy is associated with lifestyle changes and is a source of considerable psychological and emotional stress.

This study aims to assess depression in patients undergoing radiotherapy treatment in our department.

Material/Methods:

One hundred patients with various types of cancers were interviewed with the Beck Depression Inventory the radiotherapy treatment course. The median age was 51 years [ 16- 90] with a sex ratio of 0.33. The most frequent localizations were Breast (57 patients), Prostate (12 patients), and Head and Neck cancers (6 patients). The inventory includes 21 items with an increasing severity score of 0 to 3 for each item. The final score was analyzed as follows: a score of 0 to 9 indicates a normal psychological state, 10 to 18 indicates mild depression, 19 to 29 indicates moderate depression and 30 to 63 indicates severe depression.

Data analysis was performed using SPSS version 26.

Results:

The questionnaire was led during the first week of treatment for 41 patients, during treatment for 39 patients, and at the last week of treatment for 20 patients (32.6%).

The median Beck test score was 13 [0-50].

Thirty-seven patients (37%) were free of depression. However, 30 patients had mild depression, 19 patients had moderate depression and 14 patients had severe depression.

Conclusion:

Our results show that depression is common in patients undergoing curative radiotherapy. More than 60% of our population suffers from this comorbidity with severe depression in 14% of cases. These results underline the necessity of psychological management as soon as the cancer is diagnosed and of regular psychological assessment to detect the beginning signs of depression to prevent this comorbidity or manage it as early as possible.