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Prevalence of depression in adults with cancer: a systematic review
implications
Depression is an important and potentially fatal but treatable complication of cancer. As well as having substantial effects
on quality of life, depression contributes to non-adherence to medical treatments [53]. In order to plan effective services, we need accurate estimates of its prevalence in clinically meaningful subgroups of
cancer patients.
Despite a large number of relevant
publications, it was striking that few studies met our basic quality
criteria and we, therefore,
currently lack adequately precise and useful
data on the prevalence of depression in clinically relevant subgroups of
cancer
patients. Studies that used expert interviewers
to diagnose depression were more consistent in their findings and
reported
a lower prevalence than studies that used less
expert interviewers. Finally, we wish to make a plea for an improvement
in
the quality of the research published in this
area and suggest that the quality criteria used in this review, along
with the
use of expert interviewers, are a prerequisite
for the funding and publication of future studies on this topic.
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