gms | German Medical Science

Objective: Patients with cerebral tumours perioperatively show high rates of distress, anxiety, and depression. For several patients with eloquently located cerebral lesions awake surgery is the best surgical method for preservation of speech and motor function but might be accompanied by increased psychological stress. Aim of the present study was to find out if patients planned for awake craniotomy suffer from increased prevalence or higher scores in distress, anxiety or depression.

Methods: Data were collected perioperatively using the NCCN distress thermometer, Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), the SF36 as well as the European Platform of Cancer Research quality of life questionnaire brain module (EORTC QLQ-BN20). Retrospective statistical analyses for nominal variables were conducted using Chi-square-test. Metric variables were analysed using the Kruskal-Wallis-Test, the Man-Whitney-U-Test and Independent-sample T-tests.

Results: Data from 54 patients (26 male, 28 female) aged 29 to 82 years (56.07 ± 15.34 years of age) were available for statistical analyses. 37 of the patients received primary and 17 patients recurrent surgery. Awake surgery was planned for 35 patients, 19 patients were planned for non-awake surgery.There was no significant difference in awake versus non awake surgery patients regarding prevalence (has or has not) of distress (p=.695), anxiety (p=.165) or depression (p=.786). Furthermore, awake surgery had no significant influence on distress thermometer score (p=.470), anxiety-score (p=.461) or depression-score (p=.417) as well as future uncertainty (p=.436) or global health-status (p=.943). Additionally, analyses revealed that primary or recurrent surgery also did not have any significant influence on prevelance or scoring of the evaluated items.

Conclusion: Analyses of our cohort’s data suggest that planned awake surgery might not have a significantly negative impact on patients concerning the prevalence and severity of manifestation of distress, anxiety or depression in psychooncological screening. However, data only comprise a small number of patients, hence further investigation in larger patient cohorts are to be conducted.