Effect Of Psychosocial Treatment On Survival Of Patients With Metastatic Breast Cancer

Additional Notes

The 1-year intervention consisted of weekly supportive group therapy with self-hypnosis for pain. Both the treatment (n=50) and control groups (n=36) had routine oncological care. At 10-year follow-up, only 3 of the patients were alive, and death records were obtained for the other 83. Survival from time of randomisation and onset of intervention was a mean 36.6 (SD 37.6) months in the intervention group compared with 18.9 (10.8) months in the control group, a significant difference. Survival plots indicated that divergence in survival began at 20 months after entry, or 8 months after intervention ended. Most striking was the difference in survival from time of randomisation, when intervention began, until date of death. Survival time for the treatment group was significantly longer compared with controls. In addition the interval from first metastasis to death was significantly longer for the group randomised to treatment. Thus the intervention group lived on average twice as long as did controls.