Abstract
Background: Postoperative functional impairments are common in patients with oral cancer following surgery. Furthermore, these patients frequently experience fatigue and anxiety, which are strongly linked to a lower quality of life (QOL). The goal of our study was to investigate the effectiveness of comprehensive nursing intervention on alleviating postoperative fatigue and anxiety in patients with oral cancer.
Methods: A cohort of one hundred sixty patients who had surgery for oral cancer was randomly split into experimental and control groups. The research focused on evaluating fatigue and anxiety levels in postoperative oral cancer patients, both before and after the nursing intervention, in the pre-test and post-test groups. The methods utilized to measure the degree of fatigue and anxiety were the Multidimensional Exhaustion Inventory (MFI-20) and the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) scale respectively.
Results: The analysis revealed a statistically significant difference in educational status (p<0.01), occupation (p<0.01), monthly income (p<0.01), and cancer stage (p<0.01) between the experimental and control groups. Post-nursing intervention, the experimental group exhibited a significant decline in descriptive characteristics (p<0.04 vs. p=0.13) and in the mean and standard deviation of fatigue levels before and after the intervention (p<0.03 vs. p=0.16) compared to the control groups. However, there was no statistically significant reduction noted in the descriptive characteristics (p=0.10 vs. p=0.10), nor in the mean and standard deviation of anxiety levels before and after the tests (p=0.16 vs. p=0.28) when comparing the groups.
Conclusion: By implementing nursing interventions in regular practice, healthcare providers can help to alleviate fatigue and anxiety, which can significantly boost the QOL for postoperative patients with oral cancer. A future study should focus on improving the effectiveness of these nursing interventions over an extended period.
Keywords
Postoperative oral cancer, Nursing intervention, Fatigue, Anxiety, MFI-20 scale, BAI scale