Symptom Assessment

Actually, most cancer patients will fall between these extremes of patients whose symptom experience is only a transitory one and those who are diagnosed with a specific chronic syndrome. Hence, the formal assessment of symptoms is desirable for all cancer patients undergoing treatment; this remains a best practice, rather than established practice. The task is a sizeable one. While many local and procedure-based symptoms can be anticipated by cancer specialists, the longitudinal measurement of postsurgical symptoms, as well as guidelines for the management of persisting symptoms, are still developing (9). Not recognizing or underestimating these symptoms can become a barrier to patient care, but one that a reasonable assessment approach can help overcome (e.g., Ref. 10), even, for example, in the simple implementation of notations of pain-intensity ratings placed in patient charts (11). Attempts to develop this knowledge base through systematic clinical research efforts have made substantial progress over the past 20 years, not only in surgical therapy but also for radiation therapy (e.g., Ref. 12) and chemotherapy (e.g., Refs. 13, 14).