【Abstract】 Objective To investigate the mediation effect of psychological distress between frailty and quality of life in cervical cancer patients. Methods A total of 208 cervical cancer patients were selected as the research subjects, whose frailty degree, quality of life, and psychological distress degree were evaluated by Fried phenotype of frailty, the Chinese version of the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-Cervix (FACT-Cx), and Distress Management Screening Measure (DMSM), respectively. Pearson correlation analysis was used to examine the correlations among frailty, psychological distress, and quality of life in cervical cancer patients; the Bootstrap method was used to explore the mediation effect of psychological distress between frailty and quality of life. Results Among the 208 cervical cancer patients, the frail (n=19) and the pre-frail (n=126) accounted for 69.71%, and they had a score for quality of life of (112.08±12.66) and a score for psychological distress of (3.84±1.02). For the cervical cancer patients, the psychological distress degree was positively correlated with the frailty degree (r=0.652, P<0.05) and was negatively correlated with the quality of life (r=-0.542, P<0.05), while the frailty degree was negatively correlated with the quality of life (r=-0.470, P<0.05). Psychological distress had a partial mediation effect between frailty and quality of life, with an indirect effect of -0.251 which accounted for 54.1% of the total effect. Conclusion Among cervical cancer patients, the proportion of those in the pre-frail or frail stage is quite large; their psychological distress degree is positively correlated with their frailty degree and is negatively correlated with their quality of life, while their frailty degree is negatively correlated with their quality of life. Psychological distress plays a mediating role in part between frailty and quality of life in cervical cancer patients.

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