Objective: This study aimed to investigate clinical indicators of depression among randomly selected ambulatory patients with cancer who were receiving chemotherapy.
Methods: The patients were asked to complete the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer QLQ-C 30 and an ad hoc questionnaire regarding several additional common chemotherapy-related symptoms.
Results: Complete data were available for 211 patients. Of the total, 13.7% patients experienced clinical depression. The presence of clinical depression was significantly associated with patient demographic characteristics (education level) as well as several symptoms such as the presence of pain, sleep disturbances, loss of appetite, nausea and fatigue. Multivariate logistic regression analysis indicated that a lower education level and the presence of pain were significantly associated with clinical depression.
Conclusions: These findings suggest that ambulatory cancer patients who are receiving chemotherapy and have pain and/or a lower education level have a higher probability of suffering from clinical depression; these factors may be useful for the early identification of depression in cancer patients.