THE PREVALENCE AND CORRELATES OF FATIGUE IN PATIENTS RECEIVING TREATMENT WITH CHEMOTHERAPY AND RADIOTHERAPY - A COMPARISON WITH THE FATIGUEEXPERIENCED BY HEALTHY-INDIVIDUALS

Fatigue can be a prevalent and serious problem for the individual with cancer and can negatively impact on the individual's quality of life. Little is known about the prevalence of clinical fatigue among patien ts with cancer and how the fatigue cancer patient's experience compare s with the fatigue people experience as a function of their normal dai ly activities. This study, which utilized a control group, investigate d the prevalence of fatigue among patients receiving treatment with ra diotherapy (n = 54) and chemotherapy (n = 47) over two measurement poi nts. The level of fatigue experienced by cancer patients was compared with the level of fatigue experienced by apparently healthy auxiliary staff (n = 53) working at three cancer treatment facilities. There wer e no differences in the mean level of fatigue experienced by cancer pa tients and the mean level experienced by healthy controls before the s tart of cancer treatment. However, cancer patients experienced a signi ficant increase in fatigue over a 5- or 6-week course of radiotherapy and 14 days after treatment with chemotherapy, and these increases wer e significantly greater than the fatigue reported by healthy control s ubjects. The mid-point of the Pearson Byars Fatigue Feeling Checklist was accepted as a crude measure of clinical fatigue and was found to b e significantly different from the mean level of fatigue reported by h ealthy controls. The prevalence of fatigue among patients after underg oing cancer treatment was determined to be 61%. Fatigue in cancer pati ents was found to covary with weight, symptom distress, mood disturban ce, and alterations in usual functional activities. The best predictor s of fatigue in the patient sample were their symptom distress and moo d disturbance. Symptom distress and fatigue were significant predictor s of impairment in functional activities related to illness. Implicati ons for practice and future research are discussed.