Prevalence of paresthesia, fatigue, edema and pain after treatment for breast cancer

ABSTRACT

Objective: To investigate the prevalence of chronic symptoms among patients who underwent breast cancer treatment, and to determine the factors that might be related to these symptoms. Material and Methods: A questionnaire was applied to 87 patients undergoing breast cancer follow-up. It evaluated the length of time since treatment, therapeutic procedure (type of surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy and/or endocrine therapy), use of analgesic medication, location and intensity of pain and presence of paresthesia, fatigue and upper-limb edema. Results: The patients’ mean age was 54.46 years; the mean interval between locoregional treatment and the interview was 52.95 months. The prevalence of paresthesia symptoms was 65.5 percent; fatigue, 49.4 percent; edema, 31 percent; and pain, 31 percent. From multivariate analysis, we observed that fatigue was influenced by mastectomy (OR = 2.680; 95 percent CI = 1.127 - 6.373), radiotherapy (OR = 3.028; 95 percent CI = 1.142 - 8.030) and chemotherapy (OR = 5.271; 95 percent CI = 1.067 - 26.034), and was lower among patients who underwent endocrine therapy (OR = 0.407; 95 percent CI = 0.171 - 0.967). Paresthesia, edema and pain were not influenced by any of the therapeutic types. Conclusions: There was high prevalence of complaints among the patients who had undergone breast cancer treatment. Fatigue was the only symptom influenced by the different treatments.