Somatization Symptoms in Lung Cancer Patients and Correlative Analysis between Anxiety, Depression and Somatization Symptoms

Background and objective Lung cancer is a serious threat to human health and its morbidity and mortality in recent years has always been ranked first in the country. Lung cancer patients are often associated with anxiety, depression and other emotional problems, and anxiety, depression and other emotional problems will further lead to a series of somatic symptoms. At present, we lack the clinical understanding of somatization symptoms in patients with lung cancer and related clinical studies are not too much. This research is to study the features of clinical manifestation of lung cancer patients with somatization symptoms and correlative analysis between anxiety, depression and somatization symptoms in medical oncology department of general hospital. Methods Lung cancer patients who met somatization symptoms diagnostic standard were assessed with the self-constructed somatic symptoms investigation questionnaire, the Chinese version of the Patient Health Questionnaire-15 (PHQ-15) and anxiety and depression were recorded by the Hamilton Anxiety Scale (HAMA) and Hamilton Depression Scale (HAMD). The detection rate of the anxiety, depression and the number of patients with different severity somatization symptoms were calculated, the relationship between the PHQ-15 scores and anxiety and/or depression and the distribution of the different frequency somatization symptoms were analyzed. Results There were 43 patients with anxiety and/or depression in the 50 lung cancer patients with somatization symptoms. Prevalence rates of anxiety, depression and anxiety combined with depression were 10%, 10% and 66% respectively. The more severity the somatization symptoms are, the higher detection rates of anxiety combined with depression are. Significant positive correlations were observed between PHQ-15 scores, PHQ-15 positive symptom numbers and HAMA scores (r=0.752, P0.05). Conclusion Symptoms of anxiety or depression were very common in lung cancer patients with somatization symptoms and there was a close relationship between anxiety, depression, and somatization symptoms. The most common symptoms of these patients were nonspecific generalized symptoms.