Introduction:

Breast cancer patients and survivors frequently report fatigue, emotional, and cognitive disturbances, which reduce performance at all levels of occupation and make life quality issues a considerable clinical concern. The aim of this study is to evaluate attention and emotion regulation across radiotherapy period and the possible effects of complementary alternative medicine (CAM).

Methods:

Fifty-seven patients with unilateral breast cancer underwent surgery and systemic chemotherapy before participating in this double-blind randomized study. Two thirds were given CAM (n = 38) while the rest received placebo (carrier only, n = 19). Patients’ attention and anxiety were physiologically tested at baseline, 2 and 4 weeks during the radiation period as well as 1-month after the end of radiation session.

Results:

Both groups showed similar levels of anxiety with no significant differences at baseline nor post-radiotherapy. Long-term significant recovery of attention performance was observed in the CAM patients, accompanied by a similar tendency in anxiety level, measured by the eye-blink probability.

Conclusions:

This study physiologically validates the attention impairment reported among breast cancer survivors; also, it depicted a beneficial late-effect of a routine CAM on attention dysregulation. The suggested non-invasive physiological measures can physiologically monitor patients’ psychological and cognitive well-being as well as evaluate the beneficial effect of CAM in breast cancer patients by assessing their coping ability to support the treatment plan. Thus, the results have potential clinical implications on patients’ and survivors’ quality of life.

Trial Registration:

NIH, NCT02890316. Registered July 2016, http://www.ClinicalTrials.gov

中文翻译：

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补充替代治疗常规后乳腺癌患者的注意力失调：一项双盲随机试验

介绍：

乳腺癌患者和幸存者经常报告疲劳、情绪和认知障碍，这会降低各级职业的表现，并使生活质量问题成为临床上相当关注的问题。本研究的目的是评估整个放射治疗期间的注意力和情绪调节以及补充替代医学 (CAM) 的可能影响。

方法：

57 名单侧乳腺癌患者在参与这项双盲随机研究之前接受了手术和全身化疗。三分之二接受 CAM（n = 38），而其余接受安慰剂（仅携带者，n = 19）。在基线、放疗期间第 2 周和第 4 周以及放疗结束后 1 个月对患者的注意力和焦虑进行生理测试。

结果：

两组都表现出相似的焦虑水平，在基线和放疗后没有显着差异。在 CAM 患者中观察到注意力表现的长期显着恢复，伴随着类似的焦虑水平趋势，通过眨眼概率测量。

结论：

这项研究从生理上验证了乳腺癌幸存者报告的注意力障碍；此外，它还描述了常规 CAM 对注意力失调的有益后期效应。建议的非侵入性生理措施可以在生理上监测患者的心理和认知健康，并通过评估他们支持治疗计划的应对能力来评估 CAM 对乳腺癌患者的有益效果。因此，结果对患者和幸存者的生活质量具有潜在的临床意义。

试用注册：

NIH，NCT02890316。2016 年 7 月注册，http://www.ClinicalTrials.gov