Study documents fatigue among cancer survivors

Data confirm that the phenomenon is uncommon but not unusual and needs to be taken seriously.

By Victoria Stagg Elliott, AMNews staff. Feb. 6, 2006.

Wendy S. Harpham, MD, a general internist in Dallas, hasn't practiced medicine since 1993. She was initially diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 1990 and is now undergoing her seventh round of treatment for a recurrence. But she didn't give up practicing medicine because of the cancer. She gave it up because of the persistent fatigue she has experienced during and after treatments.

"I've really struggled with post-cancer fatigue, and it's very different from the ordinary fatigue that people feel at the end of a long day," said Dr. Harpham, who has authored several books on survivorship, including Happiness in a Storm -- Facing Illness and Embracing Life as a Healthy Survivor. "I liked to go, go, go, but I have to pick and choose what I do."

Fatigue has been talked about for some time on an anecdotal basis as a challenge for cancer survivors, but the phenomenon is increasingly getting its due as a medical problem that requires attention -- sometimes years after treatment ends. Most recently, a study published in the Feb. 15 issue of Cancer found that just over a fifth of women who survive breast cancer had persistent fatigue as long as a decade after their cancer had been considered cured. About a third were fatigued at some point in the 10 years after treatment.

"Fatigue is an increasingly important issue in survivorship, and women may still be complaining of this many years later," said Patricia A. Ganz, MD, one of the authors and director of the Division of Cancer Prevention and Control Research at the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of California, Los Angeles. "We're talking about a small segment of survivors, but it's a real entity. [Women] will tell you they just never bounced back afterwards."