[Analysis of the psychological symptoms of patients following surgery for laryngeal cancer]

We evaluated psychological symptoms of patients who underwent partial or total laryngectomy for larynx cancer.The study included 63 patients who underwent total (n=41) or partial (n=22) laryngectomy. The control group consisted of 20 healthy individuals with similar gender, age, and sociocultural characteristics. During the postoperative follow-up, the psychological symptom distribution of the patients was assessed with the Symptom Check-List-90-Revised (SCL-90-R).The SCL-90-R inventory was administered at a mean of 20.6 months (range 10 to 86 months) postoperatively. Patients with total laryngectomy had significantly higher scores than the controls in the subscales of interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anger-hostility, phobic anxiety, and global symptom index (p0.05). Partial laryngectomy patients exhibited lower scores than total laryngectomy patients, and higher scores than the control group. The only significant difference between partial laryngectomy patients and the control group was in the subscale of anger-hostility (p0.05).Patients with laryngeal cancer should be given postoperative psychological support to minimize adverse effects of total or partial laryngectomy.