CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 130Cancer survivorship and carePalliative and Oncologic CarePalliative Care and End-of-Life Issues

A prospective study to determine the association between physical symptoms and depression in patients with advanced cancer

Lloyd-Williams, Mari, Dennis, Mick, Taylor, Fiona·2004·Palliative Medicine
DOI 10.1191/0269216304pm923oa
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

Depression is a common symptom in patients with advanced cancer and patients who are depressed may also have physical symptoms which are difficult to palliate and which improve as their depression is appropriately treated. This study was carried out to determine if there was an association between depression and physical symptoms in patients with advanced cancer and to establish whether a seven-item verbal rating scale asking patients to verbally rate the severity of physical symptoms together with low mood could be used to screen for depression. The scale was validated against a semi-structured clinical interview according to DSM IV criteria. Seventy-four patients participated with an age range of 28–92 years. All patients had an ECOG performance status of two or three. The prevalence of major depression in this study was found to be 27% (95% C.I. 17–37%). The mean score on the verbal rating scale was 28.77 (median score 29.5) (95% C.I., 26.23–31.31; range 0–65). A cut-off of ≥30 gave a sensitivity of 65% and specificity of 59%, with positive and negative predictive values of 37% and 82% respectively. The verbal mood item alone had an optimal cut-off point of 3, with a sensitivity of 80% and specificity of 43%. Patients diagnosed as being depressed according to psychiatric interview rated each symptom higher than nondepressed patients. The verbal mood item and total verbal rating score correlated with a high significance (rs=0.607, P<0.01), implying a relationship between a patient's subjective mood state and other symptoms. Both using the verbal scale and asking patients to verbally rate their mood alone had poor efficacy as a screening tool. However, there is a close association between physical symptoms and the presence of depression in palliative care patients.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1191/0269216304pm923oa

Cites

33 of 33 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Lloyd-Williams, M., Dennis, M., & Taylor, F.
Affiliations
  • Department of Primary Care, University of Liverpool Medical School, Liverpool
  • University of Leicester (GB)
  • LOROS Hospice, Leicester
Venue
Palliative Medicine
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Published
2004-09
Volume
18
Issue
6
Pages
558-563
ISSN
  • 0269-2163 (ISSN-L)
  • 1477-030X
DOI
10.1191/0269216304pm923oa
OpenAlex
W2051113157
Cited by
130
References
33
Citations by year
2026: 2 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 3 · 2020: 6 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 7 · 2017: 3 · 2016: 2 · 2015: 8 · 2014: 7 · 2013: 10 · 2012: 12
FWCI
2.72
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
journals.sagepub.com/page/policies/text-and-data-mining-license (tdm)
Locations
  • Palliative Medicine (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Leicester Research Archive (University of Leicester) (submittedVersion)
Topics
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Oncology › Cancer survivorship and care
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Palliative and Oncologic Care
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Palliative Care and End-of-Life Issues
Keywords
depression, advanced cancer, somatic symptoms, depression screening, verbal rating scale, mood, palliative care, symptom severity, depression prevalence, screening sensitivity and specificity
MeSH terms
Adult, Aged, Aged, 80 and over, Depressive Disorder, Epidemiologic Methods, Female, Humans, Male, Mass Screening, Middle Aged, Neoplasms, Palliative Care, Quality of Life, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review