Symptom Clusters in Patients with Cancer with Metastatic Bone Pain

Abstract

Symptom clustering has proved to be therapeutically important because treatment of one symptom may affect others within the same cluster. The significant correlations between worst pain and the functional interference items reaffirm the importance of pain reduction as a treatment goal for palliative radiotherapy. By treating a patient's symptom of worst pain, it would subsequently ease their response burden on their daily functional activities by decreasing symptom severity, increasing function, and improving overall quality of life.