BACKGROUND: A review of the literature identifies high levels of anxiety and depression as adverse effects of oncology diagnosis and treatment, even for patients with curable cancers such as early stage breast cancer (ESBC). Studies have reported that music therapy yields remarkable, multi-dimensional benefits on an individual's mood and state of mind. The purpose of this trial is to evaluate the impact of personalized music therapy (PMT) in reducing anxiety and other adverse mental health symptoms experienced by patients receiving chemotherapy treatment for ESBC.
ELIGIBILITY: Females ≥ 18 years diagnosed with ESBC (Stage I-III) initiating intravenous chemotherapy as their only oncology treatment modality who report anxiety ≥ 4 on a numerical rating scale of 0-10.
TRIAL DESIGN: This is a 4-week, two-arm, randomized (1:1) trial evaluating the anti-anxiety benefits of PMT for women with ESBC initiating intravenous (IV) chemotherapy. The patients randomized to the experimental group will participate in 30-minute PMT sessions conducted by a Licensed Musical Therapist (LMT). Initial PMT will occur within 1 hour of the patient's first chemotherapy infusion (C1D1), then once weekly for the remaining 3 weeks of the trial. Patients randomized to the control group will be referred to the medical oncologist for standard of care (SOC) anxiety treatment. Outcomes will be measured via the Generalized Anxiety Disorder Assessment (GAD-7), the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D), the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), and the Symptom Inventory Tool-M.D. Anderson Symptom Inventory (SIT-MDASI) to be completed by both cohorts at baseline and regular intervals for the duration of the study.
AIMS: The primary endpoint is to determine the impact of PMT during chemotherapy treatment on patient reported anxiety (GAD-7). Secondary endpoints will determine the impact of PMT during chemotherapy treatment on patient reported depression (CES-D), sleep disturbances (PSQI), and quality of life (SIT-MDASI).
STATISTICAL METHODS/TARGET ACCRUAL: Patients will be randomized to receive either PMT or SOC using the Pocock-Simon dynamic allocation method to balance tumor stage between the arms. With 30 patients in each arm and approximate target accrual of 60, the study achieves 80.0% power to detect a 0.65 standard deviation unit effect size of the change in scale measure between baseline and 4 weeks at the 0.05 significance level using a one-sided two-sample t-test. GAD-7 change will be compared between the two arms using a two-sample t-test (Pooled Standard error or Satterthwaite approximation as appropriate). The secondary outcomes include CES-D, PSQI, and SIT-MDASI for which a longitudinal analysis of subscale scores will be conducted using a generalized linear mixed-effects model with fixed effects for treatment group and time. All statistical analyses will be conducted using SAS 9.3 [SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC, USA]. Statistical significance will be defined as p < 0.05.
Citation Format: Toole Jr. M, Bendinger GM, Ensor Jr. JE, Alvarez Tapias C, Smith E, McGuire E, Rados K, McNight JE, Pabbathi H, Panicker R, Johnson AT, Lammersfeld C, Alvarez RH. A randomized study of personalized music therapy for patients with early stage breast cancer receiving chemotherapy [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 2016 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium; 2016 Dec 6-10; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2017;77(4 Suppl):Abstract nr OT3-08-01.
