Psychological Analysis of GI Cancer Patients
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Implications of Person-Specific Psychological Factors in Post-operative Recovery and Clinical Outcomes of Patients Undergoing Gastro-Intestinal (GI) Cancer Surgery (Pilot Study)
IRAS ID
188822
Contact name
Ruth Nicholson
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Imperial College London
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 11 months, 30 days
Research summary
Cancer diagnosis and subsequent treatment poses a number of challenges to patients psychological well-being, with psycho-pathological symptoms becoming especially prevalent during and after treatment and surgery for a large number of patients. Such symptoms include emotional distress, depression, anxiety, maladaptive coping and lack of compliance with doctors recommendations. Coping styles were found to be related to aspects of post-operative state. Preoperative psychological variables were also shown to determine both short- and long-term post-operative recovery from spinal surgery.
There is now substantial agreement that psychological preparation for surgery is beneficial to patients. Johnston and Vogele carried out a meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials of psychological preparation of surgical patients in terms of eight outcomes: negative affect, pain, pain medication, length of stay, behavioural and clinical indices of recovery, physiological indices and satisfaction. Procedural information and behavioural instructions have shown improvement in all eight outcomes. Relaxation is also highly effective showing benefits on all outcomes except behavioural recovery. The results for cognitive interventions suggest that this type of preparation may have a specific effect on negative affect, pain, pain medication and clinical recovery. Sensory information, hypnotic and emotion-focused approaches have less evidence of effectiveness but they have been explored in fewer studies and the procedures may be less well-developed. Most intervention studies were carried out to prepare patients for cardiac, dental, orthopaedic and hernia operations, to our knowledge no studies involved pre- and post-operative GI cancer patients' profiling.
Primary objective:
• To evaluate the most important pre-operative psychological factors affecting postoperative recovery in patients undergoing surgery for GI cancer.
Secondary objectives:
• To define the incidence of postoperative psychiatric morbidity following GI and the influence of this upon clinical outcome.
• To develop a psychological screening tool to identify patients at risk of psychiatric morbidity and poor recovery following GI cancer.REC name
London - Central Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
15/LO/1847
Date of REC Opinion
25 Jan 2016
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion