Co-morbidity and pain sites in long-term gynecological cancer survivors and women in the general population

Objective. Pain is associated with cancer, cancer treatment, co-morbidity and socioeconomic conditions. The aim of this cross-sectional study was to explore the relationship between co-morbidity and number of pain sites (NPS) in long-term survivors of gynecological cancer and a representative sample of women from the general population. Study population comprised recurrence-free long-term gynecological cancer survivors (n = 160) and women selected at random from the general population (n = 493) in Mid-Norway. Mean age was 58 and 57 (range 32-75), respectively. Mean follow-up time after treatment for gynecological cancer was 12 years (SD 2.6; range 8-17). Methods. Co-morbidity was assessed as conditions/diseases over the past 12 months. NPS was recorded using a body outline diagram indicating where the respondents had experienced pain during the past week. Socioeconomic conditions were measured by Socioeconomic Condition Index (SCI). All assessments were self-reported. We tested three models of covariates with NPS as outcome: 1-2/0 (A), 3/0 (B) and 4-7/0 (C) pain sites in forward stepwise logistic regression. Outcome measure was adjusted odds ratio (aOR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI). Results. There were no differences in co-morbidity and NPS between gynecological cancer survivors and women from the general population. After adjustment for SCI, age and BMI, musculoskeletal disorders were the strongest predictor of NPS in all models, whereas migraine/headache, sleeping and psychiatric disorders were significantly associated with NPS in model A/B/C, B/C, and C, respectively. Conclusions. Gynecological cancer survivors are as healthy, and carry as much co-morbid conditions as women from the general population assessed through associations with NPS. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.