Comparative Study of Depression Symptoms in Patients Who Have Had Hemodialysis and Chemotherapy in the Town of Barbacena, Minas Gerais – Brasil.

Abstract

Depression is the world’s most debilitating disease, more prevalent in association with chronic diseases. We studied two different patient groups: with chronic renal failure in hemodialysis (H), responsible for 100 procedures/day and oncologic patients under chemotherapy (Q), with an admission rate of 659,788/year in Brazil. This study aims at investigating the presence of depression symptoms in both (H) and (Q). We associated sociodemographic and clinical variants with depression symptoms, measured the number of symptomatic patients under treatment and detected the group with the higher symptom scores. It is a cross-sectional study of the reference services in Barbacena, with 200 sample patients, prevalence 15%, power 80%, error 4%, significance 5%. We used the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and a sociodemographic one. Both were analyzed by the software SPSS-17, descriptive statistics, CHI Square Test, Fischer and Student’s t-Tests, 5% significance. Following data analysis we found 16,4% (H) and 12,2% (Q) with low or moderate symptoms; 1,5% (H) and 8,2% (Q) with serious depression symptoms. We observed that smoking and depression symptoms are linked, 66,7% (H). Weight, somatization, tiredness, sleep deprivation and decreased libido were found to be the most associated among the clinical variants. Although mental scores in both H and Q are similar it is necessary to differentiate symptoms caused by the underlying disease or depression, once none of the symptomatic patients received treatment; in (H), 8,96% of patients revealed suicidal thoughts and 60% of men suffered from erectile dysfunction.