Psychosocial services underutilized by those with head and neck cancers
Source: www.healio.com Author: Allen Chen Despite high rates of depression among individuals with head and neck cancers after radiation therapy, mental health services are severely underutilized in this patient population, results of a cross-sectional analysis suggest. Allen M. Chen, MD, of the department of radiation oncology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and colleagues evaluated data on 211 patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck. All patients underwent radiation therapy and were disease-free within at least 1 year of follow-up. Exclusion criteria included history of mood disorder, previous use of mental health services, or use of antidepressants or anxiolytics, not including sleep medications. The researchers pooled data from self-administered questionnaires to assess depression rates in these patients. The following scores were assigned to subjective responses of mood: 0, extremely depressed; 25, somewhat depressed; 50, neither in a good mood nor depressed; 75, generally good; and 100, excellent. Results suggested no differences in mean mood scores at 1 year (52), 3 years (55.7) or 5 years (62.1) after treatment. The presence of tracheostomy tube or laryngeal stoma (P=.01), gastrostomy tube dependence (P=.01) and continued smoking at the time of follow-up (P