Factors Associated with Psychological Characteristics in Patients with Hepatic Malignancy before Interventional Procedures

Objective: To investigate the psychological characteristics of hepatic malignancy patients before interventional procedures and assess associations with related factors. Methods: Two hundred and thirteen patients requiring interventional procedure for hepatic malignancy were asked to complete a survey of health knowledge and psychological symptom on health knowledge questionnaire and SCL-90 before interventional procedure. Logistic regression analysis was employed to determine the association of various demographic, clinical and health knowledge factors with the presence of psychological symptoms in patients. Results: Eight psychological symptom scores, i.e. somatization, obsessive-compulsive tendencies, depression, anxiety, hostility, phobia, paranoid ideations and psychotic states, were significantly higher than the normal range (P< 0.001). Of 213 cases in the study, 49 families (23.00%) concealed the diagnoses of hepatic carcinoma from patients; 135 patients (63.38%) described the prognosis of the disease correctly. It was demonstrated that the correlations between psychological symptoms and related factors, i.e. age, gender, education, interventional procedure times and health knowledge, were statistically significant (P< 0.05). Conclusion: Psychological distress is severe in hepatic malignancy patients before interventional procedures. Age, gender, education, interventional procedure times and health knowledge are associated with psychological symptoms which are significant different from the normal range in Chinese.