Photo by Rhoda Baer
Doctor consults with cancer patient and her father
A new study indicates that adolescent and young adult (AYA) cancer survivors continue to face social difficulties for more than 2 years after their diagnosis.
The research, published in Cancer, suggests these patients may see some improvement in their social lives during the first year after diagnosis.
However, their social functioning tends to remain constant after that, leaving them socially impaired relative to their cancer-free peers.
Previous studies have shown that AYAs with cancer experience greater challenges in social functioning than their cancer-free peers or even compared to older cancer patients.
But few studies have examined this phenomenon by following the same patients over time.
Olga Husson, PhD, of the Radboud University Medical Center in The Netherlands, and her colleagues set out to examine changes in social functioning among AYAs in the early years after a cancer diagnosis.
The researchers asked AYA cancer patients at 5 US medical institutions to complete a survey about social functioning within 4 months of their diagnosis, 12 months later, and 24 months later.
There were 141 patients (ages 14 to 39 at diagnosis) who completed the surveys.
The researchers found that, when compared to population norms, the cancer patients had inferior social functioning at all the time points studied.
Among the cancer patients, the mean social functioning score from the Medical Outcomes Study Short Form 36 Health Survey (version 2) was 52.0 around the time of cancer diagnosis, 73.1 at the 12-month follow-up, and 69.2 at the 24-month follow-up. In comparison, the population norm (for people ages 18 to 44) is 85.1 (P<0.001 for all time points).
The researchers did note that cancer patients experienced significant improvements in social functioning from baseline to the 12-month follow-up, but there was no further improvement after that.
The researchers also examined the different trajectories of social functioning over time. They found that social functioning improved over time for 47% of the cancer patients but worsened for 13%. In addition, 32% of patients had consistently low social functioning, and 9% had consistently high social functioning.
The cancer patients with consistently low social functioning were more likely to be off treatment at the time of follow-up, report more physical symptoms and higher levels of psychological distress (at both baseline and follow-up), and perceive themselves to receive less social support.
“Reducing physical symptoms and psychological distress and enhancing social support by interventions in the period after treatment may potentially help these young survivors to better reintegrate into society,” Dr Husson said.
