I am a masters student in palliative medicine, trying to develop my dissertation proposal. I want to survey symptom burden and its associated distress in cancer patients in my locality using the MSAS.
We use the MSAS a lot in our research. There are consistent associations both cross-sectionally and over time with distress. In our studies we have concluded that many patients become "distressed" when there are residual physical symptoms or other factors associated with their cancer or treatment which prevent a patient's return to normal function. We think this is because patients are frustrated, and scared by symptoms - in the former because they can't move on after treatment, the latter because, particularly symptoms that are intermittent might signal recurrence of disease. There is a very good paper by Paul Jacobson's group at Moffatt in Florida published in Health Psychology in 2013 showing how residual symptoms cascade to distress. Insomnia was associated with greater fatigue the next day and more depression the next day in a sample of women receiving chemo for ovarian cancer.
The MSAS is easily scored and the original paper by Victor Chang has details. The paper below also details.
Article New insights in symptom assessment: the Chinese versions of ...
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