Breast Cancer Patients Thrive When They're Involved in Decision-Making
Nov. 26, 1999 (Atlanta) -- After successfully being treated for breast cancer, women can enjoy a better quality of life if they help make decisions about their follow-up care, says a new study in the journal Behavioral Medicine and Psychiatry.
Previous studies have shown that when patients were allowed to choose among treatments with similar outcomes, they were less anxious and depressed, says M. Robyn Andersen, with the Cancer Prevention Research Program at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. The current study is the first to find that involvement in decision-making regarding tests for breast cancer recurrence also affects quality of life for breast cancer survivors, according to the authors.
"It is reasonable to assume that high levels of perceived risk and worry about [recurrent] cancer risk may have similar effects on breast cancer survivors," she says. "Involvement [in the decision-making process] may have beneficial effects because it gives women a feeling of control over their treatment."
The current study, which involved almost 300 women between the ages of 50 and 85, focused on patients' involvement in decisions about their follow-up care, specifically in choosing when to get tested for recurrent breast cancer (a process that involves blood tests, X-rays, and bone scans). All women had been successfully treated for early-stage breast cancer at least three years before and were no longer in treatment.
In telephone interviews, researchers asked questions about the women's overall quality of life -- how well they functioned physically and emotionally on a daily basis. They also added several issues specific to this group. Had women participated in choosing their cancer treatment? Did they worry about recurrences? Did they regularly get tested for recurrences? Who chose the testing schedule, the women or their physicians?
Just over half of the women felt that they had been very involved in making decisions about their surgical treatment for breast cancer as well as decisions regarding testing for recurrent cancer after treatment. About 80% of the women reported their level of involvement to be about right for them and a similar percentage reported thinking about their chances of developing breast cancer again rarely or not at all.