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The Impact of Cancer Pain on the Level of Hope, Mood Status, and Quality of Life Among Advanced Cancer Patients
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Abstract
Pain is one of the symptoms that patients with advanced cancer
experience and fear most. Cancer pain may affect the physical, psychological, and spiritual functions for advanced cancer patients. The purposes of this study were to explore the impact of cancer pain levels of hope, mood status, and quality of life. A total of 260 patients with advanced cancer were recruited in this study. The instruments included the Brief Pain Inventory,
Profile of Mood States, the Herth Hope Index, the McGill Quality of Life
Questionnaire, and a demographic sheet.
The major findings of this study were as follows: the levels of pain and pain interference were significantly negatively related to levels of hope,
were significantly positively correlated with mood disturbance, and were significantly negatively related to
quality of life. The results of this study indicate that levels of pain have a
negative impact on the levels of hope, mood status, and quality of life.
Therefore, improvement of the management of cancer pain for
advanced cancer patients may increase their levels of hope and improve their mood status and quality of life.
Key words: advanced cancer, cancer pain, levels of hope, mood status, and quality of life
Introduction
Pain is one of the symptoms that patients with advanced cancer
experience and fear most. Generally speaking, about 75% of advancer cancer patients experience pain. Cancer pain may affect the physical, psychological, and spiritual functions for advanced cancer patients. The purposes of this study were to explore the impact of cancer pain levels of hope, mood status, and quality of life. The levels of pain and pain interference were significantly negatively related to levels of hope, were significantly positively correlated with mood disturbance, and were significantly negatively related to quality of life.
Results
The major findings of this study
were as follows: the levels of pain and
pain interference were significantly
negatively related to levels of hope,
were significantly positively correlated
with mood disturbance, and were
significantly negatively related to
quality of life. The relationships
among levels of pain, pain interference,
levels of hope, mood status, and quality
of life are presented in Table 1.
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Discussion
The results of this study indicate that levels of pain have a negative impact on the levels of hope, mood status, and quality of life. The negative relationship between levels of pain and levels of hope supports Herth’s notion (1990) that inadequate management of physical symptoms and cancer pain will lower patients’ levels of pain. The positive correlation between levels of pain and mood disturbance is consistent with previous study conducted in the U.S. (Spiegel & Bloom, 1983; Portenoy, 1992). It has been widely advocated that pain may aversely affect patients’
overall quality of life. The result of this study supports this notion. In this study, it was found that patients
experiencing higher levels of pain were having poorer quality of life.
Therefore, improvement of the management of cancer pain for
advanced cancer patients may increase their levels of hope and improve their mood status and quality of life.
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