On 2015 Feb 11, Radboudumc Psycho-Oncology Journal Club commented:

A well-written, very informative and interesting paper with good clinical value. We believe it’s important to overcome barriers to accepting psychosocial services; not only for distress but other mental health problems as well. During the plenary discussion of this paper, our Journal Club generated the following comments:

1) 3070 patients completed the QUICATOUCH assessment of whom 10% scored above the threshold for distress (n = 310). We know from literature that psychological distress affects around 30% of all cancer survivors*. This percentage is substantially higher than the 10% found in current sample. We are wondering if there’s an explanation for this finding.

2) In the results section, table 1. Four of the big five cancer types (and Lymphoma are mentioned as seperate categories, complemented by a category named “other”. Because this “other” category is the largest one in actual number of patients, it would be interesting to know which cancer types it represents.

3) In the results section, we believe that the percentages for ‘Prefer to manage myself’, as portrayed in figure 1, do not match with the percentages mentioned in text. The figure displays a higher % of patients with a self-management preference for distress score 8-10 (53%) than distress score 4-5 (43%). In text, it’s the other way round.

*Mehnert A, 2014,Mitchell AJ, 2007,Zabora J, 2001

On 2015 Feb 11, Radboudumc Psycho-Oncology Journal Club commented:

A well-written, very informative and interesting paper with good clinical value. We believe it’s important to overcome barriers to accepting psychosocial services; not only for distress but other mental health problems as well. During the plenary discussion of this paper, our Journal Club generated the following comments:

1) 3070 patients completed the QUICATOUCH assessment of whom 10% scored above the threshold for distress (n = 310). We know from literature that psychological distress affects around 30% of all cancer survivors*. This percentage is substantially higher than the 10% found in current sample. We are wondering if there’s an explanation for this finding.

2) In the results section, table 1. Four of the big five cancer types (and Lymphoma are mentioned as seperate categories, complemented by a category named “other”. Because this “other” category is the largest one in actual number of patients, it would be interesting to know which cancer types it represents.

3) In the results section, we believe that the percentages for ‘Prefer to manage myself’, as portrayed in figure 1, do not match with the percentages mentioned in text. The figure displays a higher % of patients with a self-management preference for distress score 8-10 (53%) than distress score 4-5 (43%). In text, it’s the other way round.

*Mehnert A, 2014,Mitchell AJ, 2007,Zabora J, 2001