Anxiety levels among oral cancer patients: A case-control study from Turkey

The role of psychological stressors in cancerogenesis has been widely investigated and increased number of cancer cases in separated/divorced people, stressful and pessimistic women, and parents of deceased children are reported. This multicenter case-control study investigated the anxiety profile of a group of oral cancer patients in Turkey. Eighty-three patients with primary oral cancer were enrolled. Fifty-eight randomly selected subjects contributed as the healthy control group. A questionnaire containing State and Trait Anxiety Inventory Form-2 (STAI-2) was applied to both groups. Oral cancer patients filled the questionnaire after the diagnosis of the disease, but prior to initiation of any treatment. The scores of the groups were analyzed with independent sample t test. In all tests, p was set as 0.05. The mean scores provided for STAI-2 were 37.71 ± 7.53 for the cancer patients and 38.52 ± 7.84 for the healthy controls; the difference was insignificant (p>0.05). The highest STAI-2 score provided by oral cancer patients was 3.072, whereas this was 3.241 in the controls. Our results revealed that STAI-2 scores were not different between oral cancer and control groups. Further determination of the factors associated with oral cancer would be helpful to establish efficient screening and prevention programmes