Project 5: Improving quality of life for women with ovarian cancer - Can facilitated group counseling improve patients' quality of life, postpone cancer recurrence and increase survival time? This project aims to find out through a randomized controlled trial of women who undergo group counseling. Consortium researchers will work closely with local advocates (ovarian-cancer survivors) to ensure that the intervention is sensitive to the real needs of women with advanced ovarian cancer. If group counseling is found to significantly improve outcomes, it can be adopted immediately and incorporated in standard care. Already there is some evidence, from previous smaller studies, that social support can improve survival among cancer patients. For example, one study indicates that group counseling improved survival of women with advanced breast cancer from 18 months to 36 months. Project leader: M. Robyn Andersen, Ph.D., an assistant member of the Cancer Prevention Research Program within the Hutchinson Center's Public Health Sciences Division. Because ovarian cancer is relatively rare, it is particularly important that every patient diagnosed with the disease be included in the pool of potential participants for SPORE research. The project's Clinical Core will accomplish this objective by coordinating recruitment of both ovarian-cancer patients and at-risk women among Consortium patient-care facilities, and by recruiting additional facilities to participate in SPORE research. The Clinical Core will be headed by principal investigator Charles Drescher, M.D., an affiliate investigator in the Hutchinson Center's Public Health Sciences Division. In addition to mobilizing recruitment efforts, the Clinical Core also will interact with physicians and health-care providers in Washington state to translate the Consortium's research findings back to the community. "The Clinical
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Contact: Kristen Woodward
kwoodwar@fhcrc.org
206-667-5095
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
4-Oct-1999