Published online Jul 19, 2023. doi: 10.5498/wjp.v13.i7.486
Peer-review started: May 19, 2023
First decision: June 1, 2023
Revised: June 7, 2023
Accepted: June 13, 2023
Article in press: June 13, 2023
Published online: July 19, 2023
Processing time: 60 Days and 4.1 Hours
Differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC) often seriously impacts patients’ lives. Radionuclide Iodine-131 (131I) is widely used in treating patients with DTC. However, most patients know little about radionuclide therapy, and the treatment needs to be performed in a special isolation ward, which can cause anxiety and depression.
To explore anxiety and depression status and their influencing factors after 131I treatment in patients with DTC.
A questionnaire survey was conducted among postoperative patients with DTC who received 131I treatment at our hospital from June 2020 to December 2022. General patient data were collected using a self-administered demographic characteristics questionnaire. The self-rating depression scale and self-rating anxiety scale were used to determine whether patients were worried about their symptoms and the degree of anxiety and depression. The patients were cate-gorized into anxiety, non-anxiety, depression, and non-depression groups. Single-variable and multiple-variable analyses were used to determine the risk factors for anxiety and depression in patients with thyroid cancer after surgery.
A total of 144 patients were included in this study. The baseline mean score of self-rating anxiety and depression scales were 50.06 ± 16.10 and 50.96 ± 16.55, respectively. Notably, 48.62% (70/144) had anxiety and 47.22% (68/144) of the patients had depression. Sex, age, education level, marital status, household income, underlying diseases, and medication compliance significantly differed among groups (P < 0.05). Furthermore, multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that education level, per capita monthly household income, and medication compliance level affected anxiety (P = 0.015, 0.001, and 0.001 respectively. Patient’s sex, marital status, and underlying diseases affected depression (P = 0.007, 0.001, and 0.009, respectively).
Nursing interventions aiming at reducing the risk of anxiety and depression should target unmarried female patients with low education level, low family income, underlying diseases, and poor adherence to medications.
Core Tip: Differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC) seriously impacts the patient’s life and induces more adverse emotions. This study investigated anxiety and depression in 144 patients with DTC. Sex, education level, family factors, and basic diseases were the risk factors for anxiety and depression. Better intervention nursing measures can be proposed for clinical practice by observing and proposing indicators that affect patients’ mood risk factors and by comparing them with previous studies, thereby reducing the risk of developing anxiety and depression and improving their prognosis.