• Journal of Acupuncture Research
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.209-216
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• 2007

Objectives : To review and summarize the existing evidence on acupuncture treatment for cancer and cancer related symptoms. Methods: Literature searches were made through domestic and international databases. Data were extracted according to pre-defined criteria. The methodological quality was assessed using the Modified Jadad scale. Results: Seven studies were included. Two of the studies were high in methodological quality. One study concerning acupuncture treatment for cancerous dyspnea reported insignificant differences between the treatment group and placebo group. The other study concerning auricular acupuncture for cancer related pain showed significant pain relief compared with the control group. All the other studies were non-blinded or uncontrolled trials. Conclusion : The hypothesis that acupuncture may be effective for the treatment of cancer is not supported by the data in recent clinical trials. More accurately designed randomized control trials (RCT) are needed.

• Medical Lasers
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.189-194
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• 2021

Breast cancer-related lymphedema (BCRL) is characterized by the persistent accumulation of interstitial fluid in the peripheral tissues after treatment for breast cancer. Photobiomodulation (PBM) therapy is widely used as supportive care for patients with BCRL. A search was performed in the PubMed database to find relevant articles published over the last 20 years. Randomized controlled trials that evaluated the efficacy of PBM therapy on BCRL were included. A total of 24 studies were identified through the PubMed database. Seven studies were used for the final analysis, after excluding items that did not meet the duplication and inclusion criteria. Although PBM showed some improvement in reducing arm circumference and the symptoms related to BCRL, the results of the meta-analysis did not show any significant benefit in alleviating lymphedema. Further studies are needed with the recruitment of more participants to evaluate the long-term efficacy and safety of PBM in the management of BCRL.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.15 no.21
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• pp.9427-9432
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• 2014

Background: Delayed presentation of symptomatic breast cancer is a public health issue in Iran, making a major contribution to low survival. Despite the importance of this problem, current knowledge is insufficient to inform interventions to shorten patient delay. The aim of this study was to explore factors influencing patient delay in Iranian women with self-discovered breast cancer symptom. Materials and Methods: This qualitative study was conducted during 2012-2013. Purposeful sampling was used to recruit 20 Iranian women with self-discovered symptoms of breast cancer who attended the Cancer Institute of Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. Data were collected through semi-structured in-depth audiotaped interviews, which were transcribed and analyzed using conventional content analysis with MAXqda software version 10. Findings: Content analysis of the data revealed four main themes related to the delay in seeking medical help including: 1) attributing symptoms to the benign conditions; 2) conditional health behavior; 3) inhibiting emotional expression; and 4) barriers to access to health care systems. Conclusions: These results suggest that patient delay is influenced by complex and multiple factors. Effective intervention to reduce patient delay for breast cancer should be developed by focusing on improvement of women's medical knowledge, managing patients' emotional expression and reform of the referral system.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.755-765
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• 1999

Most people experience fatigue at some point in their lives, and they say the word ‘fatigue’ in their ordinary conversational speech. The ordinary word is used as a military or engineering term and has been studied in various different disciplines, such as ergonomics, physiology, psychology, medicine, and nursing. In spite of its widespread uses, however, fatigue has not been well defined. The term of fatigue Is thus often used with different meanings and is applied in diverse contexts that had led to a confusion of ideas. In people with cancer, fatigue is reported as a major distress. Despite the importance of fatigue in cancer patients, the phenomena of fatigue is poorly understood. Therefore, the purpose of the present study is to analyze the concept of fatigue in people with cancer. The process for the concept analysis was guided by Walker and Avant's conceptual analysis methodology. The identified attributes of fatigue in the present study were subjective feeling, lack of energy, sustenance, and multidimensions. The antecedents were cancer treatment and economic status. The consequences were decreased daily, vocational, leisure, and social activities, uncertainty, and difficulties in adjustment. Symptoms (pain, anorexia, and insomnia) and emotional disturbance were not clear whether they are antecedents or consequences. However, they are related with cancer related fatigue. Even though still in the beginning stage, instruments measuring cancer related fatigue have been developed by some nursing investigators.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.723-730
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• 2015

Background: This study was performed to assess patient symptoms prevalence, frequency and severity, as well as distress and coping strategies used, and to identify the relationships between coping strategies and psychological and physical symptoms distress and demographic data of cancer patients. This cross-sectional descriptive study involved a total of 268 cancer patients with various types of cancer and chemotherapy identified in the oncology unit of an urban tertiary hospital. Materials and Methods: Data were collected using questionnaires (demographic questionnaire, Medical characteristics, Memorial Symptom Assessment Scale (MSAS) and Brief COPE scales and analyzed for demographic, and disease-related variable effects on symptom prevalence, severity, distress and coping strategies. Results: Symptom prevalence was relatively high and ranged from 14.9% for swelling of arms and legs to 88.1% for lack of energy. This latter was the highest rated symptom in the study. The level of distress was found to be low in three domains. Problem-focused coping strategies were found to be more commonly employed compared to emotion-focused strategies, demonstrating significant associations with sex, age group, educational levels and race. However, there was a positive correlation between emotion-focused strategies and physical and psychological distress, indicating that patients would choose emotion-focused strategies when symptom distress increased. Conclusions: These findings demonstrate that high symptom prevalence rates and coping strategies used render an improvement in current nursing management. Therefore development of symptoms management groups, encouraging the use of self-care diaries and enhancing the quality of psychooncology services provided are to be recommended.

• Korean Journal of Adult Nursing
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.705-717
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• 2009

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify symptom clusters in patients with breast cancer and to investigate the associations among them with functional status and quality of life (QOL). Methods: A convenient sample of 303 patients was recruited from an oncology-specialized hospital. Results: Two distinct clusters were identified: A gastrointestinal- fatigue cluster and a pain cluster. Each cluster significantly influenced functional status and QOL. Based on these two clusters, we identified subgroups of symptom clusters using K-means cluster analysis. Three relatively distinct patient subgroups were identified in each cluster: mild, moderate, and severe group. Disease-related factors (i.e., stage, metastasis, type of surgery, current chemotherapy, and anti-hormone therapy) were associated with these subgroups of symptom clusters. There were significant differences in functional status and QOL among the three subgroups. The subgroup of patients who reported high levels of symptom clusters reported poorer functional status and QOL. Conclusion: Clinicians can anticipate that breast cancer patients with advanced stage, metastasis, and who receive mastectomy, and chemotherapy will have more intense gastrointestinal-fatigue or pain symptoms. In order to enhance functional status and QOL for patients with breast cancer, collective management for symptoms in a cluster may be beneficial.

• YAKHAK HOEJI
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• v.52 no.3
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• pp.176-181
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• 2008

Stomach cancer shows the highest incidence among cancer patients in Korea and it deteriorates the patients' health-related quality of life considerably. This study measured utility weights of severe stomach cancer symptoms using VAS (Visual Analogue Scale), TTO (Time-trade Off) and EQ-5D (EuroQol-5 Dimension) methods. A survey questionnaire was developed to describe the symptoms of severe stomach cancer comprehensively and concisely using VAS, TTO and EQ-5D. A face-to-face interview was conducted for 21 cancer inpatients in a hospital and 25 non-patients. The mean utility weight is 0.498 for VAS, 0.375 for EQ-5D and 0.300 for TTO. Using VAS or TTO methods, there were no statistically significant differences between patients and non-patients while there was significant difference in EQ-5D. The utility weight with VAS and EQ-5D has shown similar trend - higher score in patient group, male and aged while it has opposite trend with TTO.

• Korean Journal of Adult Nursing
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.441-450
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• 2001

The purpose of this study was to identify the effects of cancer prevention and early detection education on cancer-related knowledge, attitudes, and preventive health behavior of middle-aged women in Korea. The research design was a nonequivalent control group pretest-posttest design. The subjects of this study were 38 middle-aged women from a church in Taegu. An Experimental group of 19 and a control group of 19 women were studied. The study was conducted from September 21, 2000 to October 27, 2000. The cancer prevention and early detection education had been provided to the experimental group for 2 weeks. The contents of the education program for the third most prevalent cancer of Korean women were : 'the risk factors of cancer', 'the early symptoms of cancer', 'the diagnostic test for cancer detection', and 'the cancer prevention methods'. The instruments used for this study were modified, cancer-related knowledge, and attitude, preventive health behavior tools of Suh et al.(1998). Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, $\chi^2$-test, t-test, ANCOVA with SPSS WIN 9.0/PC. The results were as follows : 1) Hypothesis 1 that the women who get cancer prevention and early detection education will have higher scores of the cancer-related knowledge than the women do not get cancer prevention and early detection education was accepted(F=4.732, p=.037). 2) Hypothesis 2 that the women who get cancer prevention and early detection education will have higher scores of cancer-related attitudes than the women do not get cancer prevention and early detection education was rejected(F=.118, p=.733). 3) Hypothesis 3 that the women who get cancer prevention and early detection education will have higher scores of cancer-related preventive health behavior than the women who do not get cancer prevention and early detection education was rejected(F=2.250, p=.143). On the basis of the above findings, the following recommendations are suggested : 1) It is necessary to identify the variables affected on cancer-related knowledge, attitudes and preventive health behavior. 2) It is necessary to develop a well organized cancer prevention and early detection education program to change cancer-related attitude and preventive health behavior.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.309-314
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• 2012

Objective: To investigate the psychological characteristics of hepatic malignancy patients before interventional procedures and assess associations with related factors. Methods: Two hundred and thirteen patients requiring interventional procedure for hepatic malignancy were asked to complete a survey of health knowledge and psychological symptom on health knowledge questionnaire and SCL-90 before interventional procedure. Logistic regression analysis was employed to determine the association of various demographic, clinical and health knowledge factors with the presence of psychological symptoms in patients. Results: Eight psychological symptom scores, i.e. somatization, obsessive-compulsive tendencies, depression, anxiety, hostility, phobia, paranoid ideations and psychotic states, were significantly higher than the normal range (P< 0.001). Of 213 cases in the study, 49 families (23.00%) concealed the diagnoses of hepatic carcinoma from patients; 135 patients (63.38%) described the prognosis of the disease correctly. It was demonstrated that the correlations between psychological symptoms and related factors, i.e. age, gender, education, interventional procedure times and health knowledge, were statistically significant (P<0.05). Conclusion: Psychological distress is severe in hepatic malignancy patients before interventional procedures. Age, gender, education, interventional procedure times and health knowledge are associated with psychological symptoms which are significant different from the normal range in Chinese.

• Journal of Hospice and Palliative Care
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.185-189
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• 2023

Purpose: Limited research has been conducted on the prevalence of non-medical opioid use (NMOU) in Korean cancer patients who have received prescription opioids (PO). This study aimed to identify the potential proportion of NMOU in cancer patients who had been prescribed opioids in Korea. Methods: A retrospective cohort analysis was conducted on 14,728 patients who underwent cancer-related treatment between January 2009 and December 2019, using electronically collected data from a tertiary hospital in Korea. Information regarding the type and duration of opioid use was gathered. A detailed review of medical charts was carried out, focusing on patients who had been prescribed opioids for over 60 days beyond a 12-month period following the completion of their cancer treatment (long-term PO users). Results: Out of the 5,587 patients who were prescribed PO and followed up for at least 12 months, 13 cases of NMOU were identified, representing 0.23% of the patient population. Among the 204 long-term PO users, the rate was 6.37% (13/204). The most commonly misused opioids were oxycodone and fentanyl. For the group confirmed to have NMOU, the median duration of prescription was 1,327 days in total. Of the 13 patients diagnosed with NMOU, 9 reported withdrawal symptoms, 3 exhibited craving behavior for opioids, and 1 experienced both symptoms. Conclusion: This study found that 0.23% of cancer patients who had been prescribed opioids in Korea demonstrated NMOU. Despite this relatively low rate, careful monitoring is necessary to minimize the risk of NMOU in this population, especially among long-term PO users.