Symptom Burden in Advanced Breast Cancer Patients and Its Association Between Death Anxiety and Psychological Distress

Objective: Recent research has documented psychological distress in advanced breast cancer (ABC) patients, but few studies have examined how death anxiety is affected by the symptom burden. Therefore, this study aims to explore the association among symptom burden, death anxiety and psychological distress (depression and anxiety) in ABC patients.

Methods: This cross-sectional study used the Death and Dying Anxiety Scale (DADDS), 9-item Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9), General Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7) and MD Anderson Symptom Inventory (MDASI) to assess death anxiety, depression, anxiety, and symptom burden, respectively. Bias-corrected bootstrapping methods were used to estimate indirect effects and 95% confidence intervals.

Results: Two hundred ABC patients completed the questionnaires. All of the respondents were females, with a mean age of 50±10 years. Initial correlation analyses revealed significant associations of death anxiety with depression (r=0.57, P<0.001), anxiety (r=0.60, P<0.001) and symptom burden (r=0.43, P<0.001). Moreover, depression (r=0.53, P<0.001) and anxiety (r=0.45, P<0.001) were significantly correlated with symptom burden. An analysis using Hayes' PROCESS macro revealed the partial effecting role of death anxiety in the relationship between depression and symptom burden, and between anxiety and symptom burden (contributions to the total effect of 0.247 and 0.469, respectively).

Conclusions: This study provides insight into the relationship between death anxiety and symptom burden. The results suggest that interventions addressing death anxiety may be more effective for alleviating the depression and anxiety experienced by ABC patients with a symptom burden.