Patient characteristics that predict depression in patients with oral cancer

Abstract

Background: Head and neck cancer are among the top ten most common causes of cancer-related deaths worldwide. Oral-cancer treatment frequently causes negative social, emotional, and psychological consequences, and can result in depressive disorders. To treat these disorders, the risk factors for depression must be detected and insight into the possible changes in coping styles must be obtained. Aims: The primary aim is to identify characteristics that are associated with depression in oral-cancer patients before treatment and shortly after treatment, as well as after 6 months, 1-year, and 5-years after their primary treatment. Second, this study investigates the possible change in coping strategies before treatment and 5-years after treatment. Method: This primary data-analysis study is part of a prospective longitudinal and multicenter cohort study. Oral-cancer patients were included in the study. A multiple logistic and linear regression analyses were used to measure the predictive characteristics for depression. A paired t-test was used to measure the relation between the coping strategies. Results: One hundred and forty-three patients were included before treatment. High symptoms of depression were reported by 22.4% of the patients before treatment. The analysis revealed that the following predicted depression in oral-cancer patients: stage-T4 tumors, radiotherapy or in combination with surgery treatments, female, older age, lower BMI, primary education as highest education level, and a higher emotional-orientation or lower task-orientation coping. Both avoidance and task-orientation coping were significantly lower 5-years after treatment. Conclusion: Female gender, primary education as the highest level of education, and the use of different coping styles were considered as the most important patient characteristics that predict depression. task- and avoidance coping styles were lower in patients with oral-cancer after 5-years. Implications: The findings of this study enable nurses to recognize oral-cancer patients with higher risk for depression to reduce the severity of depression.