Screening for Emotional Distress in Cancer Patients: A Systematic Review of Assessment Instruments

摘要: Screening for emotional distress is becoming increasingly common in cancer care. This systematic review examines the psychometric properties of existing tools used to screen patients distress, with goal encouraging screening programs use standardized that have strong psychometrics. Systematic searches MEDLINE and PsycINFO databases English-language studies were performed using a uniform set key words (eg, depression, anxiety, screening, validation, scale), retrieved independently evaluated by two reviewers. Evaluation criteria included number validation studies, participants, generalizability, reliability, quality criterion measure, sensitivity, specificity. The literature search yielded 106 described total 33 measures. Many generic cancer-specific scales satisfied fairly high threshold terms their generalizability. Among ultrashort measures (ie, those containing one four items), Combined Depression Questions best receiving palliative short five 20 Center Epidemiologic Studies-Depression Scale Hospital Anxiety demonstrated adequate properties. long 21-50 Beck Inventory General Health Questionaire-28 met all evaluation criteria. PsychoSocial Screen Cancer, Questionnaire on Stress Cancer Patients-Revised, Rotterdam Symptom Checklist are can also be recommended routine screening. In addition, other may considered specific indications or disease types. Some measures, particularly newly developed scales, require further against structured clinical interviews (the standard measures) before they recommended.