Fatigue assessment in children and adolescents undergoing oncology treatment

Abstract

Objective: To evaluate the fatigue of children and adolescents undergoing cancer treatment. Methods: A cross-sectional study with 31 children and adolescents aged 5-17 years, undergoing cancer treatment. Data collection was carried out in the period January-August 2022 in a large pediatric hospital in Southern Brazil. There, the Pediatric Quality of Life InventoryTM Multidimensional Fatigue Scale questionnaire was applied to assess fatigue and collect clinical and sociodemographic data. In descriptive statistics, measures of central tendency and dispersion were used. Categorical variables were presented using absolute and relative frequencies. In inferential statistics, we use the Pearson or Spermann correlation tests with a significance level of 5%. Results: the prevalence of males (n=19; 61.3%) was observed. The mean age was 10.6±3.64 years and the mean treatment time was 6.0±3.3 months. Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (n=9; 29%) and central nervous system tumors (n=5; 16.2%) were the most prevalent oncological diseases. Chemotherapy was the most prevalent treatment modality (n=17; 54.8%) in participants; the combined modalities of chemotherapy with radiotherapy or surgery were those that caused the greatest increase in fatigue. Conclusion: Fatigue was present in all participants in this study. The tiredness dimension relative to sleep and/or rest was the one that presented the lowest scores, justifying the low scores also found in the general tiredness dimension.