Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
Abstract Cancer is one of the leading causes of mortality in India with a crude rate of 100.4/100,000. Sarcomas, despite being rare cancers, are a deadly class of cancers. Scant previous studies have assessed stress, coping strategies, and quality of life (QOL) among rare and more debilitating forms of cancers like sarcomas. (1) To assess the perceived stress, coping strategies, and QOL of sarcoma survivors. (2) To determine the association of perceived stress, coping strategies, and QOL with selected demographic variables, i.e., age, sex, education, occupation, and marital status. This descriptive cross-sectional study was undertaken at the Sachin Sarcoma Society, New Delhi, between February and May of 2024 and enrolled 130 sarcoma survivors, aged 18 to 55 years. Stress was assessed via the Perceived Stress Score (PSS), coping strategies via Brief-COPE, and QOL via the EORTC QLQ-30 (European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer Core 30 Quality-of-Life Questionnaire) scale. We also collected information on socio-demographic characteristics. Besides descriptive summary statistics, we provide chi-square–based results comparing the former among socio-demographic characteristics. Majority (59.2%) of the participants were aged 26 to 44 years, and the majority were females, with 43% having a graduate degree, and 90% did not have a family history of cancer. Over 90% of the study sample had moderate stress and approximately 7% had severe stress as per the PSS scale. Means of moderate and high stress levels ranged from approximately 20 to 31. On average, the mean for Brief-COPE domains was over 18 and the functional domain of QOL score had a mean of approximately 56 and the symptom domain had 16. Gender was significantly associated with the Brief-COPE score (chi-squared statistic = 4.52, p = 0.03). Moderate stress and a decreased QOL were indicated by the majority of sarcoma survivors. Coping mechanisms vary by gender, which emphasizes the need for specialized psychological therapies. Further longitudinal research is necessary to determine the temporal relationships among sarcoma diagnosis, stress, coping, and QOL outcomes.
Bohit et al. (Wed,) studied this question.