The Effect of Constipation and Pain on the Psychoneurological Symptoms and Performance in Advanced Breast Cancer Women

Abstract

Objective: Pain, depression, sleep disturbances, anxiety, and constipation are common symptoms in samples of women with breast cancer. These symptoms have a negative effect on performance status. In advanced breast cancer, pain and constipation were highly prevalent. Similarly, depression, anxiety, and sleep disturbances were highly reported in the literature. Examining the effect of these symptoms on performance status in advanced breast cancer would help alleviate their negative effect on performance level and thereby improve patient’s quality of life. This study sought to examine the individual effect of constipation and pain on performance when mediated by the psychoneurological symptoms (i.e., depression, anxiety, and sleep disturbances).
Methods: This study was a secondary analysis of a de-identified dataset that involved 86 women diagnosed with advanced breast cancer from a previous cross sectional study.
Results: Logistic Regression showed that constipation has a highly significant effect on psychoneurological symptoms. Indicating that severe constipation can lead patients to experience poor psychoneurological symptoms three times higher than non-constipated patients. The pain did not show a significant effect on performance when mediated by the psychoneurological symptoms. Although the effect of pain on performance was not statistically significant, study results indicated that severe pain increases the risk of having poor psychoneurological symptoms and poor performance status.
Conclusion: Constipation led to experience worse psychoneurological symptoms compared with patients who did not report constipation. The significant effect of Constipation on the psychoneurological symptoms highlights the importance of managing the effect of coexisting symptoms comprehensively to alleviate the effect of other correlated symptoms (e.g., pain and constipation).