| Summary: | 碩士 === 長庚大學 === 護理學研究所 === 90 === The purposes of this study were to: (1) observe the long-term changes of hope status, functional status, body weight, and dysphagia grade, (2) examine the effect of hope status on disease prognosis among esophageal cancer patients. A prospective study design with purposive sampling was used. Esophageal cancer patients were recruited from oncology outpatient department and inpatient wards of a medical center in Northern Taiwan. Ninety-five valid subjects with one-year follow-up were adopted. Data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics, Generalized Estimating Equation, Kaplan-Meier survival analysis, Cox proportional hazard model.
The major findings of this study were: (1) Compared with baseline data, the levels of hope decreased gradually month by month. The hope levels of the 6th and the 12th month were lower than baseline significantly. (2) The functional status of the 4th month was decreased significantly. And the functional status was significant increased in the 11th month. (3) Compared with baseline, the body weights were significant decreased every month except the 3rd month. (4) Dysphagia grade was decreased as time elapsed. From the 4th month and later, patients could take normal food. (5) The 7-month survival rate was 75% and the 1-year survival rate was 54.04% for these esophageal cancer patients. (6) According to a multivariate analysis, the predictors of survival were the dysphagia and treatment plan. Treatment plan was the most important predictor the local recurrence. (7) When other relevant covariates were controlled, the multiple Cox regression analysis showed that the hope of 6th month was significantly related to survival.
The findings of this study can help nurses understand the variation of hope and physical function in different phase for esophageal cancer patients. Furthermore, appropriate interventions can be implemented in nursing practice to help them managing the symptoms and fostering patients’ hope in order to increasing quality of survival.
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