Depression and anxiety in long-term cancer survivors compared with spouses and healthy controls: a systematic review and meta-analysis

cancer is increasingly thought of as a chronic disease—about 70% of patients live for at least 5 years after diagnosis. A key question for clinicians is whether the prevalence of mood disorders is significantly different in patients compared with spouses. A second question is whether the prevalence of mood disorders is different in long-term cancer survivors compared with the general population. This study took a form of a systematic review. Search terms- Title=((depressi* or mood or anxious or anxiety)) AND Topic=((long-term or years or months or survivo*) and (control* or healthy or spous* or relative or carer or caregiver or family)) AND Title=((cancer or tumour or tumor or metast* or oncology or palliati* or lymphoma or leukaemia or leukemia or myeloma or bone-marrow transplant)) Results “cancer patients had much the same prevalence of depression as did spouses and healthy controls”. results suggest that after diagnosis of cancer, increased rates of anxiety tend to persist compared with healthy controls, whereas increased rates of depression are less longlasting. Anxiety thus seems more prevalent than the usually tested depression and distress. Thus anxiety scales could be ulitilised more so in practice which may influence QoL, pain and burden on the diagnoses of cancer. limitation is that few studies provided adequate clinical descriptions of functional performance, social support, past history, or stage of disease. Thus, we were unable to adequately examine predictors of anxiety and depression ref http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1470204513702444