Scanxiety and Psychological Distress in Cancer Patients at Routine Follow Up Visits

Abstract

For cancer patients who have survived after treatment, the persistent expectation that cancer may relapse is a primary cause of anxiety and can have an impact on their physical, social and spiritual well-being. Distress is described as "an uncomfortable emotional experience of a psychological, spiritual or social nature. Distress exists along a continuum, ranging from common feelings of insecurity, distress, and fear to problems that can become debilitating, like depression, anxiety, panic, social withdrawal, and moral crisis Routine surveillance imaging studies may create "scanxiety" and may worsen cancer-related distress. 'Scanxiety "refers to the clinically debilitating distress, patients with cancer feel in the period surrounding imaging scans. These surveillance studies should be ordered at a frequency and duration compatible with the existence of risk of recurrence and to include only testing with strong positive and negative predictive values, and only when early detection of recurrence will improve survival or quality of life. There are little studies that specifically measured scan-associated distress, and its consequences on quality of life. However, numerous studies have concluded that imaging can cause serious distress when healthy individuals perform a cancer screening scans.