2011 Volume 5 Issue 1 Pages 13-17
Previous literatures have clarified that cancer patients tend to have depressive feelings and that they require supportive care for depression. We have tried to describe the actual situation of psychiatric care for the breast cancer patients among the acute care hospitals in Japan based on the DPC data. For this study, we have extracted 28,995 breast cancer cases (female patients only) from the DPC database (1st July 1 2010 to 31st October 2010). Based on this data set, we have counted the cases with depression and anxiety symptom as comorbidity or complication. Then we analyzed the depressive symptom related cares from the detailed process data (F file). Patient of 60–69 yr old is the largest population (7,985 cases; 27.5%) followed by 50–59 (6,791; 23.4%), 70 yr old and more (6,523; 22.5%) and 40–49 (5,804; 20.0%). The highest prevalence of depression related symptom was observed for young patient under 40 yr old (depression 3.6% and anxiety 3.2%). The percentages of patients with depression received psychiatric liaison care, antidepressants, and palliative care were 9.9%, 18.7% and 2.0%, respectively. These figures were 8.0%, 4.3%, and 0.7% for patients with anxiety symptom. The results have suggested that the Japanese breast cancer patient could not receive appropriate clinical services for mental problems.
