Advanced gynecologic cancer patients and healthy parents: Emotional distress and information given to their children.

Abstract

e20704 Background: Describe relationship between advanced gynaecologic cancer (AGC) patients and healthy parents emotional distress (ED) and information amount related to the disease they give to their children. Methods: We studied 28 children, aged between 5 and 18 years, whose mothers had AGC, 13 breast (72.2%), 2 cervix (11.1%) & 3 ovarian (16.7%). Interview with numerical scale from 1 to 10 points was used to assess the amount of children's information described by parents. Hospitality Ansiety Depression Scale (HADS) was used to assess parents ED. Parents and children older than 12 years gave Informed Consent. Results: 18 mothers diagnosed of AGC were included. They added up to a total of 31minor children (M=1.7;SD=0.7) 3 of them, younger than 5 years old were excluded. Emotional distress of parents did not significantly correlate with the number of minor children they had. In the other hand, depression symptoms increased with the duration of disease, for patients and healthy parents (rho=0.5,p<.01;rho=0.6,p<.01) also when patient's functional capacity decreased (rho=-0.4,p<.05;rho=-0.5,p<.05). Mothers gave the information in 60.7% of the cases, 35.7% both parents shared this task. Anxiety among patients (M=10.21;SD=5.4) and healthy parents (n=13,M=8.8;SD=4.8) had not significant correlation with the amount of information given (n=28,rho=-0.01,p>0.05;n=19,rho=-0.2,p>.05). Patients (M=7.3;SD=4.2) and healthy parents (n=13,M=5.2;SD=3.1) depression grade did not correlate with the amount of information children had (n=28,rho=0.2,p>.05;n=18,rho=-0.1,p>.05). Information given by mothers was slightly higher (M=6.8; SD=2.3), it was the same for sons and daughters (U=93.5,p>.05). Yet, fathers tended to give more information to daughters (M=6.2; SD=1.8;U=22.5,p=0.06). Information given by patients and healthy parents was concordant (rho=0.5;p<.05). Conclusions: AGC patients and healthy parents ED is not related with the information amount parents give to their children. We must be aware of the need to provide support to fathers during mothers’ disease in order to ease communication with the children, taking into account that mothers are who mainly give information to their children.