"The anxiety many men experience after being diagnosed with prostate cancer may lead them to choose potentially unnecessary treatment options, researchers from the University at Buffalo and Roswell Park Cancer Institute report in a new study.
"For a small group of advanced cancer patients, using an online tool for learning about end-of-life medical decisions and developing an advance directive document did not lead to psychological distress, according to a new study.
" 'One thing we noticed is that many patients with advanced cancer had not had these conversations,' said lead author Dr. Michael J. Green of the humanities and medicine departments at Penn State College of Medicine in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
" 'When we talked to the oncologists about it, a response we heard again and again is, "it's not appropriate at this time, it's going to make them anxious, take away their hope",' Green told Reuters Health.
"He and his team set out to see if it was true that working through end of life planning took away cancer patients' hope or raised their anxiety levels.
"In an Australian study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, White et al found that a telephone-based peer-support intervention reduced breast cancer distress among women with a BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutation.
"Pain is a common symptom of cancer and side effect of cancer treatment, and treating cancer-related pain is often a challenge for health care providers.
"The Penny George Institute for Health and Healing researchers found that integrative medicine therapies can substantially decrease pain and anxiety for hospitalized cancer patients. Their findings are published in the current issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute Monographs.
" 'Following Integrative medicine interventions, such as medical massage, acupuncture, guided imagery or relaxation response intervention, cancer patients experienced a reduction in pain by an average of 47 percent and anxiety by 56 percent,' said Jill Johnson, Ph.D., M.P.H., lead author and Senior Scientific Advisor at the Penny George Institute.