Factors that predict patients' functioning following treatment for cancer

The study assessed whether the extent of cancer patients' functioning following a course of radiotherapy could be predicted from the amounts of concern, emotional distress, social support and symptoms they had when they began the treatments and from the number of unanticipated experiences they had related to receiving radiotherapy. A sample of 79 patients, 58 with breast cancer and 21 with lung cancer, were interviewed at the beginning and following a course of radiotherapy. When their diagnosis and age were controlled statistically, the only variable which predicted the subject's functioning following the radiotherapy was the amount of emotional distress they experienced when they began the treatments. An examination of the extent to which the individual components of emotional distress contributed to the subjects' functioning revealed that the tension-anxiety component of the emotional distress score was the best predictor of their functioning.