The purpose of this descriptive research study is to apprehend patients with gastrointestinal cancer such as gastric cancer, colorectal cancer, gallbladder cancer, and pancreatic cancer, then to categorize clusters of each symptom, and to verify the r... The purpose of this descriptive research study is to apprehend patients with gastrointestinal cancer such as gastric cancer, colorectal cancer, gallbladder cancer, and pancreatic cancer, then to categorize clusters of each symptom, and to verify the relationship between the identified clusters of symptoms and ability of activity, depression, and quality of life. Subjects of the study are 128 patients with the gastrointestinal cancer that are being treated in the inpatient and outpatient departments of ‘E’ University Hospital, located in Seoul. A tool used in the study to measure the symptoms is Korean-translated version of MDASI-GI (M.D Anderson Symptom Inventory - Gastrointestinal), developed by Wang’s (2010) by adding 5 more questions, to M.D Anderson Symptom Inventory that was first created by Cleeland’s (2000). MDASI was translated by Yun’s (2006) and the added questionnaire was translated by Baek Yung Ae, and Lee Myung Sun (2015). Other tools used are The Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG)-Performance Status Rating for the ability of activity that developed by Oken’s (1982), A Korean-translated version of The Center for Epidemiologic Studies-Depression (CES-D) for the depression that was developed by Randloff (1977) and translated by Cho & Kim(1993), and Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-General (FACT-G) Version 4 (2010) for the quality of life that was first created by Cella (1997) and further developed and translated by Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy(FACIT) Measurement System. Collection of materials was done from October 14th 2016 to November 25th 2016 and the collected data was analyzed in terms of mean, standard deviation, t-test, ANOVA test, Factor analysis, and Pearson’s correlation test using SPSS WIN 21.0. The study results are as follow: 1. Participants in this study are 128 gastrointestial cancer patients with average age of 60.54±11.47 of which 60.2% were male, 50.8% were with a high school diploma, 53.1% were without a religion, and 76.6% were without a job. 71.9% of the patients were being treated in the inpatient department and the most diagnosed cancer was the colorectal cancer with 56.3%. 93.0% of the participants did not have a metastasis yet and 68.8% were being treated with surgeries and chemotherapies concurrently. The most used chemotherapy was 5FU/LV (Flurouracil/Leucovorin), a major anticancer drug, with 22.7%. 2. By classifying and testing the symptom and its subsequent difficulties of the participants using 10-point scale, the most experienced symptom was a fatigue of all symptoms. The level of the symptom intensity was the strongest in the order of fatigue, lack of appetite, and change of appetite, and the weakest in the order of shortness of breath, dysphagia, and vomit. 3. By testing the factor analysis in order to identify clusters of symptoms, 5 clusters of symptoms were confirmed: I. ‘A cluster of the chemotherapy drug-related (Cluster I)’ consisting of nausea, fatigue, belatedness, numbness or tingling, and forgetfulness. II. ‘A cluster of the emotion-related (Cluster II)’ consisting of vomit and shortness of breath. III. ‘A cluster of insomnia-related (Cluster III)’ consisting of sleeplessness, drowsiness, and diarrhea. IV. ‘A cluster of pain-related (Cluster IV) consisting of painful dysphagia. V. ‘A cluster of dryness-related (Cluster V) consisting of constipation and mouth dryness. 4. By analyzing influence analysis of the 5 clusters in this study, differences between the symptom clusters were verified by the subjects’ gender, religious status, jab status and level of education in the general feature criteria, by the subjects’ medical type, diagnosis, clinical stage, therapy or treatment type, elapsed time after diagnosis, number of chemotherapy, and type of chemotherapy. Female patients had higher scores in the cluster I and Cluster II than male patients. Outpatients had higher scores in the cluster I than inpatients. Also, the symptom clusters in relation to metastasis of cancer did not have significant differences statistically. The scores of the symptom clusters were higher for those who had less ability of activity and less quality of life than the others, and patients with depression generally had the higher scores. All of the 5 clusters had relationships to the difficulties, but especially the cluster I affected the difficulties most significantly. By the result of the study above, it is confirmed that patients with gastrointestinal cancer are experiencing various symptoms, and the symptoms form into symptom clusters. The 5 clusters identified in this study are affected by the subjects’ general and disease-related features, and they also have correlations with the symptom-related difficulties of ability of activity, depression, quality of life, and etc. This study is to apprehend the symptoms and the influence factors of patients with gastrointestinal cancer and perhaps to be used as a basic foundation to develop a symptom managing program for cancer patients. ，韩语论文，韩语论文范文 |
