Patient education integrated with acupuncture for relief of cancer-related fatigue randomized controlled feasibility study

BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine

Research Article

Jihey Lee¹  Robert M Elashoff²  Saskia K Subramanian³  Ron D Hays⁴  LuGe Yang⁵  Irene Kim⁵  Jie-Jia Li⁵  Eleanor K Axe⁵  Ka-Kit Hui⁶  Michael F Johnston⁶  Roberto B Vargas⁷ 

[1] Department of Biostatistics, School of Public Health, UCLA, LA, USA;Department of Biostatistics, School of Public Health, UCLA, LA, USA;Department of Biomathematics, UCLA Graduate Division, LA, USA;Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, LA, USA;Division of General Internal Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, LA, USA;Department of Health Services, UCLA School of Public Health, LA, USA;RAND, Santa Monica, CA, USA;UCLA Center for East-West Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, LA, USA;UCLA Center for East-West Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, LA, USA;Division of General Internal Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, LA, USA;Department of Health Services, UCLA School of Public Health, LA, USA;UCLA Center for East-West Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, LA, USA;Division of General Internal Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, LA, USA;Department of Health Services, UCLA School of Public Health, LA, USA;RAND, Santa Monica, CA, USA;

关键词: Breast Cancer Survivor;    Social Cognitive Theory;    Recruitment Method;    Brief Fatigue Inventory;    Community Clinical Oncology Program;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1472-6882-11-49

 received in 2010-10-20, accepted in 2011-06-25,  发布年份 2011

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundCancer-related fatigue (CRF) is a prominent clinical problem. There are calls for multi-modal interventions.MethodsWe assessed the feasibility of delivering patient education integrated with acupuncture for relief of CRF in a pilot randomized controlled trial (RCT) with breast cancer survivors using usual care as control. Social cognitive and integrative medicine theories guided integration of patient education with acupuncture into a coherent treatment protocol. The intervention consisted of two parts. First, patients were taught to improve self-care by optimizing exercise routines, improving nutrition, implementing some additional evidence-based cognitive behavioral techniques such as stress management in four weekly 50-minute sessions. Second, patients received eight weekly 50-minute acupuncture sessions. The pre-specified primary outcome, CRF, was assessed with the Brief Fatigue Inventory (BFI). Secondary outcomes included three dimensions of cognitive impairment assessed with the FACT-COGv2.ResultsDue to difficulties in recruitment, we tried several methods that led to the development of a tailored recruitment strategy: we enlisted oncologists into the core research team and recruited patients completing treatment from oncology waiting rooms. Compared to usual care control, the intervention was associated with a 2.38-point decline in fatigue as measured by the BFI (90% Confidence Interval from 0.586 to 5.014; p <0.10). Outcomes associated with cognitive dysfunction were not statistically significant.ConclusionsPatient education integrated with acupuncture had a very promising effect that warrants conducting a larger RCT to confirm findings. An effective recruitment strategy will be essential for the successful execution of a larger-scale trial.Trial registrationNCT00646633

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Johnston et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2011. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.