Artigo Acesso aberto Produção Nacional Revisado por pares

Lung cancer symptoms and pulse oximetry in the prognostic assessment of patients with lung cancer

2005; BioMed Central; Volume: 5; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1186/1471-2407-5-72

ISSN

1471-2407

Autores

Sandro José Martins, Nelson Ho, Sueli O Cavamura, Cecilia M Harada, Crystina Aoki Yamamoto, Teresa Yae Takagaki,

Tópico(s)

Lung Cancer Treatments and Mutations

Resumo

Medical oncologists continue to use performance status as a proxy for quality of life (QOL) measures, as completion of QOL instruments is perceived as time consuming, may measure aspects of QOL not affected by cancer therapy, and interpretation may be unclear. The pulse oximeter is widely used in clinical practice to predict cardiopulmonary morbidity after lung resection in cancer patients, but little is known on its role outside the surgical setting. We evaluated whether the Lung Cancer Symptom Scale and pulse oximetry may contribute to the evaluation of lung cancer patients who received standard anticancer therapy.We enrolled forty-one consecutive, newly diagnosed, patients with locally advanced or metastatic lung cancer in this study. We developed a survival model with the variables gender, age, histology, clinical stage, Karnofsky performance status, wasting, LCSS symptom scores, average symptom burden index, and pulse oximetry (SpO2).Patient and observer-rated scores were correlated, except for the fatigue subscale. The median SpO2 was 95% (range: 86 to 98), was unrelated to symptom scores, and was weakly correlated with observer cough scores. In a multivariate survival model, SpO2 > 90% and patient scores on the LCSS appetite and fatigue subscales were independent predictors of survival.LCSS fatigue and appetite rating, and pulse oximetry should be studied further as prognostic factors in lung cancer patients.

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