Symptom burden in patients with common cancers near end-of-life and its associations with clinical characteristics: a real-world study

Background: Patients dying with cancer can experience various physical and psychological symptoms. We aimed to determine the type and severity of symptoms within the last 6 months of life in a large real-world cohort of patients with cancer.

Methods: We examined prospectively collected patient-reported outcomes of patients with lung, colorectal, breast, prostate or pancreatic cancer using the revised Edmonton Symptom Assessment System (ESASr) questionnaire from a large province in Canada from 2016 to 2017. The ESASr was categorized into physical and psychological symptom subscores and total symptom score, and each was classified as none to mild (0-3) or moderate to severe (4-10) based on intensity. Multivariable logistic regression analyses were performed to evaluate the relationship between clinical characteristics and symptom scores.

Results: We identified 1159 patients eligible for analysis, of whom 52.2% were men and median age was 68 years. There were 613, 192, 149, 111 and 94 patients with lung, colorectal, breast, prostate and pancreatic cancer, respectively. While approximately half of patients reported moderate to severe physical symptom subscores and total symptom scores, only one-third reported moderate to severe psychological subscores. On multivariable logistic regression analyses, women were more likely to report moderate to severe physical (odds ratio [OR], 1.52; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.08-2.12; P = 0.016), psychological (OR, 1.60; 95% CI, 1.14-2.26; P = 0.006) and total symptom scores (OR, 1.80; 95% CI, 1.28-2.51; P = 0.001). Patients with lung cancer were also more likely to report moderate to severe physical and psychological subscores (OR, 1.95; 95% CI, 1.28-2.96; P = 0.002 and OR, 1.78; 95% CI, 1.13-2.81; P = 0.013) and total symptom scores (OR, 1.83; 95% CI, 1.20-2.81; P = 0.005). Finally, those closer to death were more likely to report moderate to severe physical symptom subscores (OR, 2.07; 95% CI, 1.33-3.23; P = 0.001) and total symptom scores (OR, 2.29; 95% CI, 1.46-3.60; P < 0.001), but not psychological symptom scores (OR, 1.34; 95% CI, 0.84-2.14; P = 0.210).

Conclusions: There is significant symptom burden in patients with cancer near the end-of-life. Further, physical symptoms appear to be more intense than psychological symptoms. Symptom-directed care is still needed to improve the quality of end-of-life.