• Psychosomatics · May 2011

    Somatic symptom burden in adults with sickle cell disease predicts pain, depression, anxiety, health care utilization, and quality of life: the PiSCES project.

    • Aslihan Sogutlu, James L Levenson, Donna K McClish, Susan D Rosef, and Wally R Smith.
    • Department of Psychiatry, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA 23298, USA.
    • Psychosomatics. 2011 May 1; 52 (3): 272-9.

    ObjectiveSomatic symptoms have been extensively studied in primary care, but infrequently in diseases causing pain in multiple sites. We therefore examined the impact of somatic symptom burden (SSB) on pain, depression, anxiety, health-care utilization, and quality-of-life in adults with sickle cell disease (SCD).MethodsSubjects were 230 adults in the prospective Pain in Sickle Cell Epidemiology Study (PiSCES). Baseline data included demographics, genotype, Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ), and SF-36 health-related quality of life (HRQOL). In daily diaries for 6 months, patients recorded SCD pain and SCD health-care utilization. To exclude common SCD pain sites, we abridged the PHQ's 15 somatic symptoms to 11 (PHQscd). We divided subjects into two groups: PHQscd≥11 (high SSB), and PHQscd<11 (low SSB).ResultsHigh SSB occurred in 18.3% of subjects and was more frequent in women than men (24.6% vs. 9.1%, p=0.0033). Sixty percent of subjects with anxiety and 37.5% of those with depression had comorbid high SSB. Percentage of pain days not in crisis pain was significantly higher in somatizers, but crisis pain did not differ between groups. The high SSB group's hospitalization, scheduled doctor visits, and overall utilization, particularly on non-crisis days were significantly higher than the low SSB group's (p values < 0.05). All SF-36 subscales were significantly negatively correlated with PHQscd (p<0.0001).ConclusionsEven after excluding common SCD pain complaints, high somatic symptom burden was 1.5 to 2 times more prevalent in SCD patients than in primary care. High SSB in SCD predicts more non-crisis pain and healthcare utilization for pain, and is associated with depression, anxiety, and poorer HRQOL.Copyright © 2011 The Academy of Psychosomatic Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…