- Title
- Smoking and other health factors in patients with head and neck cancer
- Creator
- McCarter, Kristen; Baker, Amanda L.; Britton, Ben; Wolfenden, Luke; Wratten, Chris; Bauer, Judith; Beck, Alison K.; Forbes, Erin; Carter, Gregory; Leigh, Lucy; Oldmeadow, Christopher
- Relation
- NHMRC.1021018 http://purl.org/au-research/grants/nhmrc/1021018
- Relation
- Cancer Epidemiology Vol. 79, no. 102202
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.canep.2022.102202
- Publisher
- Elsevier
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2022
- Description
- Background: Information on smoking and other health factors in head and neck cancer (HNC) patients throughout treatment, follow-up and survivorship is limited. This study explores patterns of multiple health factors during radiotherapy (RT) and naturalistic long-term follow-up in a convenience sample of patients with HNC. Methods: Smoking, alcohol use and depression were measured at baseline, 4 and 12 weeks post RT for a sub-group of 99 patients who participated in a randomised controlled trial and completed long-term follow-up. These factors plus healthy eating, physical activity and fatigue are also reported from the long-term follow-up component. Smoking was measured by self-report and biochemically, whilst all other variables were by self-report. Where variables were assessed at multiple time points logistic mixed effects regression models determined within-person changes over time. Results: There were important discrepancies between self-reported (4–7%) and biochemically verified (13–29%) rates of smoking. Rates of smoking and hazardous alcohol intake were significantly increased at follow-up compared to baseline. Depression rates were observed to be higher at end of RT compared to baseline. At long-term follow-up, fatigue was common and co-occurred with suboptimal healthy eating and hazardous alcohol use. Conclusion: Clinically important levels of smoking and alcohol consumption post RT in this sample suggest possible targets for intervention beyond treatment into long-term follow-up of patients.
- Subject
- head and neck cancer; smoking; tobacco; alcohol; physical activity; diet; SDG 3; Sustainable Development Goals
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1484572
- Identifier
- uon:51357
- Identifier
- ISSN:1877-7821
- Language
- eng
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