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Screening for distress in cancer patients: The NCCN rapid‐screening measure
Author(s) -
Hoffman Benson M.,
Zevon Michael A.,
D'Arrigo Mary C.,
Cecchini Tracy B.
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
psycho‐oncology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.41
H-Index - 137
eISSN - 1099-1611
pISSN - 1057-9249
DOI - 10.1002/pon.796
Subject(s) - distress , medicine , cutoff , receiver operating characteristic , cancer , oncology , gastroenterology , clinical psychology , physics , quantum mechanics
An Erratum has been published for this article in Psycho–Oncology 13(11) 2004, 792–799. The present investigation evaluated the NCCN distress management screening measure (DMSM) in a sample of 68 mixed site cancer patients. The DMSM was administered with the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI) and the Brief Symptom Inventory‐18 (BSI‐18). Convergent validity was established by the moderate positive correlation between the DMSM and the BSI and BSI‐18 global severity indices ( r =0.59, p <0.001 and r =0.61, p <0.001, respectively). Divergent validity was demonstrated by the lower correlations between the DMSM and the BSI subscales suggestive of psychopathology (e.g. paranoid ideation, obsessive‐compulsive). Receiver operative characteristic (ROC) analyses demonstrated that the DMSM has moderate ability to detect distress identified by the BSI and the BSI‐18 (area under curve=0.74, p <0.001 and 0.80, respectively, p <0.01, respectively). While the ROC curves suggested that the DMSM lacks a single cutoff that maximizes sensitivity and specificity, the use of multiple cutoffs renders the DMSM an effective and very rapid screen for distress among cancer patients. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.