Network analyses of associations between cancer‐related physical and psychological symptoms and quality of life in gastric cancer patients

Abstract Objective This study applied network analyses to illustrate patterns of associations between cancer‐related physical and psychological symptoms (CPPS) and quality of life (QOL) before and after surgery. Methods Participants consisted of 256 gastric cancer patients admitted for curative section surgery at the surgical department in a teaching hospital in Korea between May 2016 and November 2017. Participants completed the survey, including MD Anderson Symptom Inventory, Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, and Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy‐Gastric Cancer before surgery (T0), 1 week after surgery (T1), and 3–6 months after surgery (T2). Results Three networks featured several salient connections with varying magnitudes between CPPS and QOL across all time points. Particularly, anxiety was tightly connected to emotional wellbeing (EWB) across all time points and physical wellbeing (PWB) at T1. On the other hand, depression was connected to functional wellbeing at T0 and T2, gastric cancer concerns (CS) at T1, and PWB at T2. Distress and sadness were the most central symptoms in the three networks. Other central symptoms included shortness of breath at T0, fatigue at T0 and T1, and PWB and CS at T2. Anxiety, depression, and EWB served as bridges connecting CPPS to QOL across all time points with varying degrees of importance, as did PWB at T1 and T2. Conclusions Treating psychological distress and enhancing EWB and PWB can be high impact intervention targets throughout the cancer trajectory.