Abstract

Due to the high recurrence and mortality rate of liver cancer, most of the people are prone to mental disorders after diagnosis and during the treatment process. Depression is one of the most common mental disorders. 8 %-24 % of cancer individuals experience depression. Depression can significantly interfere with a patient’s ability to cope with cancer, physical symptoms and treatment which can have a negative impact on treatment effectiveness. In this study, we studied the clinical information of 42 individuals with liver cancer complicated with depression where we divided them into control and treatment groups. The treatment group (n=24) was treated with fluoxetine, psychological counselling combined with acupuncture while control group (n=18) was treated with fluoxetine and psychological counselling. We have comparatively analysed the hospital anxiety and depression scale scores and tumors disease progression in two groups. We did not find any difference in age, tumor staging, liver cancer treatment plan and pre-treatment hospital anxiety and depression scale score between the two groups (p>0.05). The cure rate of the treatment group was significantly higher than that of the control group (p<0.05). Similarly, the disease progression of liver cancer was significantly better in the cure and stabilized of depression (p=0.017 and p=0.012).